Diary of a Smegpot Made Good
by Bob Regent
Summary: Summary: For Arnold Rimmer, his life was full of mistakes, but what if one tiny mistake could change everything?
1. Chapter 1

_**Diary of A Smegpot Made Good.**_

 _ **By**_

 _ **Master Chief Petty Officer (Ret'd) Arnold J Rimmer BSc (Hons), MSc (Hons), SSc, SCMH, MM**_

 _ **Foreword**_

Its funny but many years ago I thought that I would be writing a memoir based on my exploits as an officer, a gentlemen and a leader of men and my rise through the ranks to the admiralty itself, it too a long time for me to admit to myself that I wouldn't follow my brothers into the ranks of the Space Corps Special Services, although the shock that I was more like one of my brothers than I ever realised allowed me to finally know better.

Throughout my time in the Jupiter Mining Corporation and my secondments to the Space Corps Battle Fleet during the First AI War, I was fortunate enough to see a number of things that surprised me, the first generations of mechanoids, the wholesale decommissioning of the JMC's fleet in favour of demi-light speed vessels, the destruction of Mimas in the war, my first combat medals and honours that came with them, the arrival of an alternate version of myself from another reality (What a Git), my wife in her wedding dress, the birth of my sons and unbelievably the strangest thing (and if I'm honest to you dear readers, one of the most fulfilling) was my enemy and nemesis turned protégé and friend standing up as one of my groomsmen at my wedding complete with his wife and their twins.

Are there things that I regret? Yes, I regret that I had to suffer a life filled with misery for thirty years, I regret that my father died before I could rub his nose in the fact that I had made a life for myself in spite of what he wanted, I regret that it took so many years to understand my brothers and what pushed them to succeed. I regret that I spent so long unhappy and unable to succeed when if I had chosen another path I would have been far happier than I ever had and lastly I regret and always have done, that we were unable to save more of the crew of that ship than we did, those of us who stayed behind always wondered if we could have done me, could have done better and saved those lives. It's something that haunted us for the rest of our days.

The changes that humanity have gone through in the last hundred years since I first boarded the mining ship Red Dwarf, one of the first and now decidedly decrepit Solar Class ships that is still somewhere in orbit of Jupiter awaiting a final pull from the gas giant to send it to its grave, the light barrier breaches, the first time and matter transporter experiments, the colonisation of the stars beyond our own solar system, all of it has allowed humanity to grow beyond anything we could have dream of. I was proud to be a part of that, a small part maybe but a part nonetheless.

Did I see everything I wanted to? No, I never got to visit distant stars, never got to walk the forests of New Glen Hammond on Alpha Centauri Three, never met an alien and yes I know people will scoff at the idea now it seems we really are alone in this area of the Galaxy, but it was something that I always hoped would happen. Did I fantasise about that first contact? You bet I did, even back when I was stuck as a lowly second technician for a decade I wanted to be that lucky sod that made contact, it might have waned as I got older and found my niche in life but I truly always wondered if we were alone.

But enough of that, things can change with a decision or a turn around or a single step in what should have been the wrong direction, this is my story, how I changed that step into a path and then finally onto a road of success that I had always wanted and so I dedicate this book to those people who believed in me, who trusted me and who helped me through my life from those first steps to the last bump in the road. To them I owe my past and my present, for my future, who knows?

MCPO A J Rimmer (Retd)

 _ **Chapter 4:**_

"Welcome back to reality Lister."

"I, what?"

"How do you feel."

"I just got in there, didn't it work."

The officer just gave him a tolerant smile, the stasis booth technology wasn't used very often and even punishment details were rare, however in his decade plus with the JMC he had been responsible for this kind of discipline more than a few times. Fortunately with his forthcoming promotion off this scrap heap he wouldn't have to put up with it for much longer, shaking his head he explained again what happened and that his sentence was up.

"So we're home?"

"Not precisely, we have had some serious engine trouble and are currently in orbit of Jupiter."

"Jupiter, smeg, I wanna go home."

"Well since we are in fact trapped here for the duration, most of the crew have been transferred off the ship to other locations, a few more personnel are heading back towards the inner planets. You can head back to Earth for reassignment or terminate your contact there, although Lister I'm afraid to tell you that we found your cat."

"Smeg, Frankie?"

"One black cat and a litter of six kittens, they were all sent down to the medical labs." The officer raised a hand to stop Lister's outburst, "Where they are all currently being well looked after, turns out several of the nurses found out about the kittens and threatened to 'Cut off certain items' if the Captain tried to have them put down. You were very lucky Lister, Hollister was tempted to leave you in for another eighteen months because of it."

"Do I get her back?" Lister asked.

He shrugged, "No clue, that's up to the Captain. You've done your time so your record's clean."

"So now what?"

"Well you'll have three days to acclimatise yourself to the changes and then you'll return to Z Shift and continue with your original duties as required, although with more than three quarters of the ship's crew ummm... debarked most of your work will be minimal." He was informed, "Your sleep quarters remain the same, your personal effects are still in storage for you to reclaim and your food and drink credit is at the same amount as when you went into stasis plus the three days."

"Great same old slog under Rimmer, great fun."

"Oh don't worry, you won't be under Rimmer's command anymore. He's been transferred."

"Yeesss Brutal." Lister cheered, "Easy street here I come."

Heading back to his quarters Lister stopped by a dispenser grabbing a milkshake and curry, he'd not eaten in eighteen months after all, walking into the room he dropped his food onto the table before sitting down, looking around he was more aware that his stuff was gone. His posters were gone, his guitar, the inflatable banana that kept on disappearing then reappearing had gone, even his Titan Hilton blanket had been put into storage, what was worse was the fact that the place stank. Not of dirt or anything else but it was clean and tidy and just smelled wrong, like no-one had really lived in it for a while.

A few minutes passed before he heard the door open behind him, still contemplating the changes in his life he forgot about one minor fact as he spoke up to the figure that had appeared.

"Hey smeg for brains guess who's back?"

Of course that minor fact caused him to almost choke on his food.

"I really do think that you have mistaken me for someone else."

Losing his balance Lister fell out of his chair and hit the deck hard, head darting around to the new figure his eyes travelled up and up and up, the figure was tall, taller than pretty much anyone he knew on the crew except maybe Headbanger Harris and his cronies. He was slim but broad with a massive crop of curly hair on his head, the rank of First Technician was embroidered on his chest along with the pre-requisite name tag.

"I... sorry... I thought you were me bunkmate."

"Ahh yes, you must be David Lister."

"That's me."

"Robert Granger, I came aboard from the facility at Miranda" he held out his hand for Lister to shake, accepting it Lister went back to his food. "I'm the current head of Z Shift."

 _That explains why he's here_ "Where's Rimmer?"

"Rimmer?" The man's looked confused until he realised what Lister meant. "Ahh yes the man who was in charge of Z shift before me, I believe he was transferred to another area of the ship, he was required to change his quarters because of the distance involved."

"Transferred? He's already dead last on this ship, what did he do to smeg up that bad?"

"Smeg up? My dear chap, Mr Rimmer was transferred and promoted."

 _ **Flashback**_

The usual malaise came over Rimmer as he sat down, going by rote he checked his pens, slide rule, calculator and other odds and ends that he believed would help him even minutely with this exam. The invigilator continued blabbing the usual introduction, Rimmer zoned out, he already knew the damn thing by rote and so ignored the one thing that would have saved him some time, and one thing that he had no idea would change his life.

"You may begin."

Turning over the sheet Rimmer filled in the top of the sheet as usual, barely thinking about it given the number of times he had been through this rigmarole. At least this time he might at least get a few points for filling it in correctly.

 _Surname: Rimmer_

 _Forenames: Arnold Judas_

 _Service Number: 08119_

 _Age: 30_

All fine and dandy let's do this

 _Question One_

 _The distance between the ship's primary scanner array and the furthest point that the ship's computers can accurately chart is approximately..._

Rimmer stopped reading the question, blinking slightly he reread the paper before scanning down the page, turning it over and continuing to the third and fourth pages.

Question Three:

Typical scan modes consist...

Question Seven

Replacing the primary lenses...

Question Nine

How do you feel...

 _*Oh God, its the wrong test*_

Rimmer turned back to the front page and scanned the top, there it was in clear black and white capital letters 'SCANNER TECHNICAL AND OBSERVATION EXAM', he slumped back in his chair before looking up at the clock, it had been a bare fifteen minutes since they had begun and now he realised he had blown it big time. He'd got the wrong room, the wrong exam and now he was stuck until he could get out, he couldn't risk just walking out and he couldn't risk letting people know how badly he had screwed up.

Looking at the test he reread the first question for the exam, * _The distance between the primary array and the furthest point... that was easy, anybody who had looked over the ship's specs knew that. It must be a warm up question.* Jotting down the information he also added a few additional notes about Red Dwarf's own scanner array, it probably wouldn't do much but every little helped._

Silently and diligently he filled in the exam as best he could, five questions would be enough to make it look like he had done something and so he simply wrote what he thought he knew and finished up his exam, completed the extra notes he had added to the longer questions. As the invigilator called time he grimaced slightly at the fact he hadn't quite finished the additions to the last of the questions, sighing inwardly he handed the paper off to the woman and slouched off out of the room.

 _*Great, another failure on my record, nine times and this one will just say I didn't turn up.*_

Dejected Rimmer walked up to one of the ship's observation domes, opening it and entering before

a quick use of a technician's override and the hatchway sealed behind him, one of the only truly useful things that his rank (or lack of) gave him.

They were months out from Jupiter and heading further out towards one of the other planets, they were probably tapped for mining Helium Three or one of the transatomics that were abundant out here, staring out at the stars he felt far more at home than he ever had on his home moon or within the confines of the ship. The stars had always been there, they may move or change slightly over the years but they were always there as his closest companions, even without his father's 'encouragement' he had always wanted to be in space, travelling between the stars.

Granted right now he was not totally happy with his lot, he should have been far further along in his career after almost a decade and a half in service but had been stymied at every turn, sometimes it had been his idiotic bunkmates who had deliberately tried to meddle with his life or destroy any chance he had to pass the exam. Other times his own body had caused him to collapse half comatose for one reason or another, but this time, this time he couldn't pin it on anybody else but himself.

He had never been that good at the whole Astronaut thing, he had hoped upon everything he held dear that he would have found his way in the world but even after all this time he still couldn't make it.

He was a failure.

And this time he had no-one else to blame.

 _ **Three Days Later**_

"Second Technician Arnold Rimmer to the Drive Room, repeat, Second Technician Arnold Rimmer to the Drive Room" The voice of the ship's computer came from a monitor close by, head shooting up Rimmer looked at the screen. Holly's face turned to look at him, the usually immaculate uniform was stained and frayed as his workload had doubled with his erstwhile subordinate's punishment of a nice long stay in stasis. "Alright Arnold."

"Great what does that overweight donut muncher want now?"

"I dunno but it's pretty important, he wants you there now."

"Smeg." Rimmer cleaned his hands and the sleeves of his uniform shirt as best he could, the sleeping quarters were twenty minutes away at a run and it was already going to take a hour to get to the drive room. Frustrated he pushed the tool cart in front of him, as if he didn't have enough work to do thanks to that curry stained idiot and his cat, now he would be behind in the critical maintenance that had been entrusted to him.

Stashing the cart in the nearest maintenance supply bay Rimmer grabbed the nearest express lift and ordered it to the drive room, ignoring the in-flight instructions and the complimentary episode of some 21st century comedic drivel, he could only guess at what Hollister wanted with him. He'd kept his head down, done his work which had completely supplanted his usual allotted time to send ideas and suggestions to the higher ups and hadn't even complained when he had been informed that Z Shift wouldn't be assigned a new technician.

The minutes dragged by as the lift inched closer to the upper decks, he rarely made his way onto the decks themselves, only using the lifts to go directly were required, the rest of the time he mainly frequented the areas nearby his own sleep quarters or the shopping complex deeper down in the ship`. All too soon or far too long depending how you look at it, Rimmer found himself in the Drive Room, for a ship the size of Red Dwarf the room was deceptively small. He had asked about that during his orientation and it turned out that this was just one of a number of Drive Rooms across the ship, each controlling a designated area and sending that information to the overall control room.

It had made sense to him that they would need a large command crew, the fact that they were scattered across the ship instead of under the all seeing eyes of the ship's master had passed him by until he had seen it himself. Within a week he had memorised every single location of the distributed Drive Rooms across the ship, even the shut down and abandoned ones.

"Excuse me." He asked a woman walking past, she turned to him and his face paled slightly. Just his smegging luck that he would run into the one person that he least wanted to see right now, Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski, hoity toity and arrogant little cretin that she was. "Ms Kochanski Ma'am I was informed to report to the Drive Room immediately.

"Dressing down are we Rimmer." She all but sneered at the state of his uniform.

"Some of us require manual labour to do our jobs Ma'am." He snarked back, he was tired, he was sore and the usual filter that kept him from sniping back had decided to take the day off. He might regret it in the morning but right now he didn't give a smeg as he recognised a moment of shock appearing in Kochanski's eyes as he shot back before just as quickly turning back into derision, he continue on before she could hit back. "I was ordered here Ma'am directly from my duties, I did not have the time to return to my quarters and change out of my work clothing."

"The Captain wanted to see you Rimmer." The tone set his teeth on edge, the way she had always spoken to him, rhyming his name with 'Scum'. Fortunately he had found a way to equate her name with a nasty venereal disease and used it at any possible time. "It'll be interesting to see what you screwed up this time."

"Well Miss Kochanski Ma'am", His own tone causing her to twitch, "Given that I've been working like a dog due to your boyfriends actions, there's very little that could have been done wrong. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to see the Captain."

"Rimmer, why are you in the technical section?" Hollister got down to it, sitting down opposite Rimmer he gestured for the other man to take a seat. Obeying his superior Rimmer sat up ramrod straight answering the question.

"Sir, it is my hope that I can pass the astronavigation exams and become an officer with a view to becoming a ship's captain in the near future." Rimmer replied. "It is something that my brothers have managed to complete and I wish to join them in the ranks of the Space Corps itself."

Hollister leaned back, "You know, your personnel file says you enjoy historical studies, re-enacting old battles and seem to be quite knowledgeable about the military of the last half millennia, why didn't you join the historical and archives sections of the Space Corps? You could have risen into the officer ranks there, you could have made a name for yourself."

"But Sir I could never have been able to make my way to a ship's Captain that way, never become a man of honour, a leader of men."

"Rimmer, I'm going to let you in on something here. Captains of ships are mostly a bunch of shit brained, arrogant try-hards with no real understanding of what goes on out here. Most of them sit around waiting for someone to hand them a chance for glory, I started in the ranks just like you did and it took me a long time to get my captaincy." Hollister tried to explain. "I was in the technical section for a while, found my way into the catering corps and made up way up from there, I never expected to be in command of a mining ship let alone one of the biggest in the fleet."

"You managed though Sir."

"Rimmer look I ordered you up here regarding this." Hollister laid an exam paper on his desk. "Can you explain yourself?"

"Sir." Rimmer's blood ran ice cold, "I wish to apologise to you and whoever had to mark that exam, I... I... ended up in the wrong exam and by the time I realised it was too late to leave and find the right room."

"No Rimmer, what I mean is can you explain this." He slid the paper across the table, picking it up Rimmer looked at the front page and then back to Hollister and back down again, this happened several times before the Io native finally looked up at the Captain. "It was checked three times by two different NCOs and an officer in the scanner cluster, the officer even gave an extra credit where the others hadn't."

Rimmer just stared at the Captain before looking back down at the paper.

 _81% Completion, Pass Grade B_

"You were the only one in that exam to break the seventy percentile on the four required questions, and got extra credit for solving all nine of them."

"I passed?" Rimmer was shocked at the sight of the exam.

"Not quite." Hollister leaned forward, "You were as not registered for this exam as a participant and as such your score won't be logged as a pass or even that you took the exam."

"Oh." Rimmer slumped dejected.

"In two weeks time the exam is being retaken by those who did not pass this time around, your name will be added to the personnel taking the exam as a last minute candidate, that is if you want to. Let me be frank here Rimmer, you have been in the technical section for twelve years and have barely moved in the ranks, you could have been a first technician by now if you had concentrated on climbing the non-com ranks instead of obsessing over being an officer. Now I can't force you to do so but given what this has shown me." Hollister picked up the exam before putting it back into Rimmer's personal file, "You might want to look at changing your career path, you obviously have skills that you haven't shown to many people, you aren't a complete idiot Rimmer otherwise you would never have been accepted into the Corps instead of the JMC."

"Yes Sir." Arnold was still in shock, "I can take it again?"

Hollister smiled slightly at the plaintive tone in the other man's voice, "Yes Rimmer you can take the test again, now given that your workload has been increased heavily I know it will be difficult for you to study as well as well as continue your duties but there is not much I can do about that except move a few of the jobs onto one of the other shifts."

Hollister had been more than aware that the reduction of manpower to the ship over the last few years of cutbacks had caused several of the shifts to have to work longer hours and with Lister incarcerated for the next eighteen months, Rimmer had been delegated to the entire workload which while barely adequate for two men was far more than a single man could do, especially one that had until recently seemed so inept. But the fact that Rimmer seemed to be more than he seemed meant that Hollister was trying his best to re-evaluate the man and that meant giving him a little slack.

"I'll move around a few of the other shifts, have them pick up the jobs outside of the immediate areas of your responsibility, give you a chance to study up on the required reading. But needless to say Rimmer you do seem to know this stuff, I am very impressed by this and you've never impressed me before."

"Sir?"

"The ship's library will have the books you need to study, you've been given dispensation to check out more than the usual maximum, you've got two weeks Mr Rimmer, make them count."

Dismissed Rimmer gave his usual salute and left the Drive Room without bothering to look around at the looks he was given, even those who knew him were unsure of his measured and determined strides, something very much unlike the man. Unwary of those thoughts in the minds of others Arnold headed back to his duties, after that he would head to the library and pick up the books he needed.

For the first time in many years Rimmer was a man on a mission and that mission was all he had, for once he knew what he needed to do and where he was going, and there was no way in hell that anybody was going to stop him.

Two weeks.

They had given him two weeks to be ready.

Three days

Three days had passed since he had taken the exam again, unlike the last time he had known what he was in for and had made sure that he was in the right place and at the right time, he had laid out his pencils and pens and waited to begin. It was funny that he had barely managed to get through a handful of the books that he had borrowed from the ship's library, but what he had gone through he had already seemed to know or at least could have guessed at.

He had always been able to fly, that wasn't anything to shout about, virtually everyone that lived in the Jovian colonies needed to learn before they left school. He'd always been rather good at it compared to a lot of things, not to the extent of his older brothers but it was one of the few things he really enjoyed. One part of the pilot training had been the need to be able to read and understand the scanner systems of the shuttles in use by most manufacturers, he'd found it oddly simple compared to land or the far more difficult Astronautic navigation.

He'd not been able to go through everything he had wanted to during the two weeks but now he could only hope that his long unused knowledge would keep him in good stead, now however he was lying alone and undisturbed in his bunkroom. For the first few days it had been easy to deal with, he could relax, listen to his own classical music choices without Lister complaining, but even for someone as used to solitude as he was it was somewhat disconcerting.

Sitting up from his prone position he looked up and out at the blackness of space, three days was the usual time for the exams to be fully marked, checked, invigilated, whatever else they needed to do but he'd heard nothing yet. He hadn't panicked, fainted, gone crazy or any of the other things that had happened to him in the astronavigation exams, he'd worked through the questions piece by piece and understood most of what he had read.

But he was still waiting.

In four hours it would be the fourth day.

Even with his abject, insane failures it hadn't taken this long to inform him.

Smeg.

"Arnold." A voice interrupted his musings, "Arnold, the Captain wants you in his office immediately."

"I... tell him I'm on my way Holly."

"Will do, oh and Arnold, good luck."

"Thanks Hol." Rimmer stood up and straightened himself up, swapping out his wrinkled shirt with a fresh one and making sure his tie was straight he headed back the Drive Room, now he would see just how much he has screwed up and how much Hollister was going to chew him out for wasting everybody's time with a fluke exam score.

 _ **One Hour Later**_

"Ninety"

It was there in black and white.

"Ninety"

He'd done it.

"I passed." Rimmer kept repeating to himself.

"Ninety"

"Only one in the re-sit to break that ninety Rimmer, only one of three across both exams. Congratulations." Hollister leaned back in his chair, out of seventy applicants, fifteen had passed through, twenty once the re-sit exams were added to the tally. But he had been surprised once again at the fact that one of the most useless and cretinous members of the crew had blown all expectations out of the water and by the looks of him the technician hadn't expected it at all.

"I passed." Rimmer looked up, "They are sure of this Sir? There's no mistake?"

"None at all, like with the first exam the invigilators went through it again several times, given they had access to your exams I can't blame them. But you nailed it Rimmer, one of the highest scores recorded by the on board examiners for the Scanner tests."

"So..." Rimmer cleared his throat, "So what now Sir?"

"Now Mr Rimmer we see just what we can do with you."

"Sir?"

"Mr Rimmer, you were given the chance partially because you impressed me and the exam staff with your performance in an exam that you had no idea about and were unprepared. The other reason was because we wanted to see what you could do if you were given that extra chance, the fact in only two weeks you increased your score by ten percent is extraordinary, another few weeks and you'd probably have raised that even high." Hollister leaned forward steepling his fingers, "I asked you once why you were a technician, you gave me your reasons and while I honestly don't agree with you but I won't stop you from continuing on that route, but I am giving you a choice."

Putting the exam on the table the Captain dropped two pieces of paper on the desk, one to either side, looking at the three then at Hollister he saw a look of calculation that he had never expected the Captain to be capable of.

"This is the choice Arnold." Rimmer was struck by the use of his first name, usually it was 'Rimmer' or 'Second Technician Rimmer' or 'Smeghead' or any other of a dozen nasty and vindictive names. "One, you go back to your quarters, you forget any of this happened. You retain command of Z Shift and we all go about our lives as if nothing had happened, this exam pass will be added to your records but nothing else, or you agree to a transfer from Ships Services to the Sensor Hub on deck 124, you'll join one of the six teams on the sensor decks and see how things go for you, for the time you are assigned there you'll be given a temporary promotion to Deck Sergeant for the duration of your probationary stint."

Rimmer's eyes widened as his nostrils flared in surprise, a transfer and promotion into another section just for passing an exam he took by accident, granted it wasn't a jump to navigation officer or console officer or any of those other ludicrous titles that they gave the upper ranks in the space corps. But wasn't that what he was going for, the gold bar of an officer and not the equally strange rank of a senior NCO on the mid decks?

"I..." He stopped, "I need to think about this Sir... I.. I mean I've never..."

"Take your time Rimmer, you are on 72 hours leave starting as of now, take your time and think this over, it means a lot of changes on this ship if you agree to it." Hollister nodded, "Once you agree let Holly know and we'll get the ball rolling if you decide to, go get some sleep Rimmer, you look like you need it."

"Sir." Saluting the Captain with a standard-non Rimmerian salute Arnold walked out of the office and past the quiet and barely active Drive Room, the night shift had begun hours before and most of the ship's eleven thousand plus personnel were asleep or partying the night away, others were locked away for one reason or another. Unthinking about his own destination Rimmer walked the corridors of the same deck passing empty exam rooms, vacant bathrooms and quiet and darkened navigation hubs.

Looking up he found himself outside one of the ship's few remaining stasis booths, there had once been over ten thousand on board, as they had become unserviceable or simply found to be in the way, they had been decommissioned and broken down for scrap and parts. Now a bare handful were scattered across the ship and normally only used for emergencies or for punishment, this one held a very familiar face in the midst of waving out at the world.

"Ahh Listy, Listy, Listy. I always knew something was going to come of your blatant disregard for procedure and respect for rank and now look at you, its been so quiet and so easy to concentrate without your constant verbal diarrhoea annoying the smeg out of me." Looking in at his erstwhile bunkmate Rimmer contemplated things, for years he had tried everything to get up higher, fifteen years ago he had been in Lister's place, only a few months into his tour but unlike the slob he had lived to climb the ranks and had only made it up a single rank which like everything else in his life could be taken from him in an instant. He had expected it to happen long ago but it seemed that fate or luck or just bone headed idiocy on his part had kept him from slipping back down.

Lister on the other hand had never cared to change his way of thinking, to make his own way up the ranks, to even think of a real career in the Space Corps and to Rimmer that annoyed him more than most of the slobby bastard's habits or suspect hygiene problems. It not only screwed with Lister's own life but it impacted on Rimmer's, he had constantly harmed any real chances he had for promotion and had never cared a jot about what his bunkmate had wanted.

For Rimmer the combination of abject laziness, no drive and a hundred different annoyances had pushed him into almost abject hatred of David Lister, at the beginning he had hope that they might be able to get through to the younger man but once he had realised there was no chance of changing the man and no way of getting him to meet Rimmer half way, he had simply given up and while following the letter of the law had reported Lister in order to bring some kind of sense to his life.

Sometimes he honestly wondered if he had been too hard on Lister, the man was barely twenty five and really had no idea where he was going, he was also pretty sure the Lister had only joined the Corps to get a more or less free ride around the solar system, doing nothing and getting paid for it while cruising around space. It had taken him less than eight months from the time they left Mimas to end up in such deep smeg that he was put away for eighteen more, granted it was for a minor infringement but even so it was usually years before people got into that much trouble.

"Well Listy can't dawdle got lots of thinking to do, ta ta."

Three days paid leave just to think about a decision that would make a change to every part of his life, he slowed his paced walk as the impact of what could happen really came to him, for the entire journey in the Xpress lift through to the trudge back to his sleep quarters he found himself sinking deeper into the same fugue like state that the Astronavigation exam had caused him, so deep into that state that when he feel into bed he didn't even register that he had arrived back, sealed the doors and fallen asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Chapter 5_**

 ** _Z Shift Bunkroom_**

 ** _02:00_**

Rimmer stood looking out at the stars, one of the handful of tiny advantages of his position was that his room had a single small viewport out into space, granted it meant that his bunk room and other technician level personnel would be turned inside out faster than a curry through a frenchman's bowels, but for him it allowed a slight refuge from the world at large. Something he would miss if he agreed to the Captain's proposal, if he signed the damn thing.

Looking over his shoulder he glimpsed at the table, yep it was still there, the contact that would give him the promotion he so desperately wanted. Twenty seven pages of legalese and lists that he never truly believed he would ever get to see, a single signature in the right place was all that was needed to accept the position and to leave this pit behind. Sighing to himself Rimmer leaned his head against the porthole, even with more than a foot of transparent steel and vacuum protection it was still cold to the feel, soothing his head as the facts of what he was up against came into sharp realisation.

For years he'd been the fool of the ship, he knew how he was seen by Hollister, Todhunter and the rest of the senior staff, he was arrogant yes, he was self centred, but he had needed to be, no-one else had ever given a damn. Now... now Hollister had given him a chance he would never have guessed he would get, the Captain for once actually gave a damn about what he did and what he could still do.

Shaking his head clear he returned to the contact looking it over, the usual legal smeg he recognised and even understood some of, the rest was simply lists of what he could expect with his promotion, duties that he would be required to attend to and the consequences that would come if he was unsuccessful, scanning through he knew that a good amount of the issue gear he already had but in all he was please with how things would change for him. The pay rise would put him far above what he had been on, enough that he could really begin saving for a rainy day, the paltry twenty four thousand he had stashed away would be nothing after a few years.

He'd long since put away his immaculately kept original fleet contract, it had been laminated, trimmed and put with care into a small book along with his swimming certificates, his diploma and his Vending Machine Maintenance Man of the Month award. But this one, this was far longer and more complete than the original one he'd signed on Io the day he left his home moon, but one that would change everything.

Silently he bent over to look it over once more, just once more.

 **Jupiter Mining Corporation Fleet Records Department**

Original Copy: Digital Copies to be entered into ship's mainframe, back up copies to be stored at JMC Archive, Mount Olympus, Mars and at JMC Headquarters, London, Earth.

Notification of Promotion to Non-Commissioned Status:

Former Rank: 2nd Technician, ship's services

Temporary Rank: Deck Sergeant (Provisional), scanner and communications department.

Ship: Red Dwarf

Class: Solar

Type: Class Five Mining Ship

Commanding Officer: Hollister, Francis L, Captain.

Crewman Name: Rimmer, Arnold J

Age: 32

Home Colony: Io, Jupiter Orbit

Rank: Deck Sergeant (Formerly 2nd Technician)

Final Salary: $£ 35000 per year (Formerly $£26500)

Food Allowance: Covered By Standard Work Credits

Unused Credits or those claimed for Overtime can be used immediately or transferred to subject's ship's financial account at the end of the financial quarter

Allowance total: Deck Sergeant: 120 Credits p/w standard)

(Formerly 2nd Technician: 91 Credits p/w standard)

Uniform Allowance: All required uniforms are covered by standard ship credits at beginning of the financial year, extra clothing may be acquired by payment of a cash deposit per item.

Civilian Clothing Allowance: Circumspect to rank (Deck Sergeant- $£150 Per Year)

Supervisory Grade Bonus: Circumspect to rank (Deck Sergeant- $£100 Per Month)

Standard Long Haul Bonus: Circumspect to rank (Deck Sergeant- $£150 Per Month)

Hazard Pay: (Deck Sergeant: Non Applicable)

Outland Revenue Tax: Removed from Salary automatically Overtime monetary claim is not counted within Tax Brackets.

JMC Retirement Fund: Removed from Salary automatically,

Paid out from age 70 unless still in service to JMC or associated corporations

 **Non Commissioned Officer Standard Table of Issue**

The following items are issued to all personnel upon promotion to rank of Deck Sergeant.

Note: All items already issued to crew member will not be re-issued unless damaged and require replacement.

Ships' personnel will be expected to already have certain items such as standard issue Identification Cards, identity tags, issue underwear, name tapes and patches. Replacement will be recieved upon promotion or demotion of rank, cost of clothing will be covered by contract by the Jupiter Mining Corporation Logistics Department. Uniform replacement due to normal wear and tear is covered by this contract, replacement cost of items lost or destroyed due to biological/chemical contamination, radioactive spillage or other unforeseen circumstances are also covered. All personnel will be expected to have at least two well kept Second Class and two well kept First Class uniforms, as well as at least one complete dress uniform, any Mess Dress will be at the expense of the user.

Replacements for all toiletries, consumables not counted under Standard Ship Credits, civilian clothing and any other miscellaneous items not counted under duty needs are at the behest of the crew member. An allowance is available to those of Deck Sergeant and above to replace any civilian clothing damaged or otherwise no longer suitable for public engagements.

All personnel are equipped with an identity tag and where necessary a medical alert tag or bracelet will be issued by the Jupiter Mining Corporation Medical Division.

 **Uniform Issue (Deck Sergeant)**

Strikethrough Indicates Already Issued and no longer applicable.

 **Standard Single Allowance Issue**

(For use with all uniforms where applicable)

5 Exercise Singlet, White

5 Exercise Shorts, White

12 Pair of heavy duty boot socks

12 Sets of underwear

2 Pairs Training Shoes

3 Pairs Heavy Duty Boots, black

1 Duty jacket, black

1 Duty jacket, grey

1 Duty jacket, Brown

2 Duty Hat, Green

2 Duty Hat, Black

7 T-shirts, White

2 Belt, Black

2 Pair, work gloves

2 Pair, safety goggles

 **Daytime Duty Issue**

6 Sets jumpsuits, grey

6 Uniform name tapes, Black and Red

6 Rank tapes, Green and Yellow

6 Sets rank tapes, suitable colours for rank

6 Ships' patches, Red and Blue

 **Daytime/Night-time Ship's Standard Issue** 7 Duty shirts, Khaki

7 Duty Trousers, Khaki

3 Duty Ties, Khaki

7 Uniform name tapes, Black and Red

7 Rank tapes, Green and Yellow

7 Sets rank tapes, suitable colours for rank

7 Ships' patches, Red and Blue

 **Non Uniform Paraphernalia**

1 JMC Crew Service ID Access card

1 JMC Crew Service Vehicle Licence

1 JMC Shipboard Debit Card

1 Set JMC Identity Tags

 **Dress Uniform (Deck Sergeant)**

1 Jacket, White

1 Trousers White

1 Pair Dress Shoes, Black

1 Set Medal Ribbons

1 Set Medals

1 Set Epaulette slides

1 Cap White

 **Personal Accoutrements**

1 Shipboard communications device

1 JMC Standard issue watchband, Grey

1 JMC Standard issue analogue wrist watch

1 JMC Standard Issue Wallet

1 JMC Standard Personal Briefcase

 **First Issue Consumables (To be replaced at crewman's expense)**

1 Pack, Ball point pens

1 Pack 0.5mm mechanical pencils

1 Tube 0.5mm mechanical pencil leads

2 Erasers

1 Measuring tape

1 Pocket level

1 Notebook

4 100 page composition notebooks

1 Multitool

1 Set, Coloured Pens, Rollerball

Setting the paperwork down Rimmer continued staring blankly at the wall, he didn't have anyone he could ask about this, his parents wouldn't care and smeg knew where his three bastard brothers were. He had no-one on board he could talk this through with, nobody gave a damn about him or his career outside of this room, even talking it through to himself in the mirror wasn't something that would sooth his anxieties.

This was what he wanted after all, the chance to make something of himself but even now with the chance there in front of him he couldn't quite make the jump, the voice in the back of his head that he never admitted to, a voice that in turn could be his mother, father, Frank, Howard, John, Lister,

Pemberton, Ledbetter, Daley, Roebuck, Todhunter and others. Every person who had ever kicked him down, told him he was worthless, every one of them had a hold in that part of his mind, a part that he could never fully silence.

He sighed loudly in the empty room, he could refuse the contact, go back to ships services and do what he knew he was good at, granted it wasn't much in the eyes of pretty much anyone who had eyes but at least he knew how to do it and it kept him busy enough. A ship the size of Red Dwarf needed maintenance on everything on board, he may be bottom of the pile but his work meant that the higher ranks had what they wanted when they wanted instead of a pile of dirty dishes and a rubber chicken in the food slot.

Fifteen years he'd been doing that job while trying to find a way, any way of climbing the ranks from the depths of technician to the high rise of officer, even if his ambitions had been somewhat beyond his capabilities. Much as people thought of him as something of an idiot, he knew he was far smarter than most realised, he just seemed to freeze up when he had something on the line.

Standing back by the window he stared at himself in his reflection, that had been why this had worked out, he had screwed up and knew that that, he had taken the wrong test and had KNOWN that his work would be for nothing and so went for it anyway. When he had been given that second chance just a few days before, he had KNOWN the answers and had KNOWN that he could do it, that is wasn't a fluke. But he also knew that if he blew it there was nothing else on the line, no gold bar of officerhood, no band of brothers, nothing except a possible transfer away from his own lackluster position.

But the offer of promotion, albeit a limited one, it still meant that he would have risen above the doldrums that had become his life, a jump of three ranks from technician to non-commissioned officer. A step onwards from and upwards, a different ladder to the one he had always expected but a ladder nonetheless, it was his for the taking.

So what was wrong with him.

No-one knew him in the scanner bay, even if they did they wouldn't expect anything from him right off the bat, no he would be alright with it, hell if it didn't work then he could just come on back down to this bunk room and no-one any the wiser that he didn't measure up. He probably wouldn't even see any of those scanner types again anyway, at the worst he could ask for a transfer to another ship, it might even work this time.

Sighing he knew he wouldn't get any sleep that night, the three day leave he had would mean that he'd be able to get some sleep later if he tried, looking at the clock next to his bunk he shook his head before sitting down grasping his hair and tugging slightly.

02:12

He'd been awake since 06:00, on duty from 08:00 and relieved of duty at 13:00, he'd been pacing, standing, sitting, fretting, analysing, reading, standing again, in any number of combinations for over thirteen hours. He'd not eaten or drunk a thing since he woke up meaning a total of thirty hours or so since he'd last had food, a sharp pain of hunger punched him in the stomach as the realisation hit him, the cafeterias would be closed, the shops in the onboard mall would be closed, only the myriad of late night eateries, more akin to an old Earth 24 hour service station's pie counter would still be open.

Sighing he realised that short of searching the back of the two lockers for some long forgotten packet of biscuits, that he would have to go out foraging or use one of the food dispensers further up the deck. Both things he was not particularly interested in doing at this time of night, still with no chance of sleep and a churning stomach desperate for food, he grabbed his jacket and headed out into the ship.

 ** _Scanner Team NCO Bunk Rooms_**

 ** _Deck 125_**

 ** _Several days later_**

Three days ago Rimmer had laid down to decide on his future, two and a half days ago he had woken up and told Holly to inform the Captain that in no uncertain terms that he was going to go ahead with the transfer and promotion, two days ago he had had a panic attack that lasted several hours as he realised what he was doing.

One day ago he had packed his entire life's belongings into a single trunk and carryall and moved three miles and several dozen decks to a larger bunk room, one in which he found he would be sharing with eight other people, none of them had been there at the time as he'd put his stuff away in an empty locker, he would decorate as he usually did when he knew where it was he would be bunking.

Ten hours ago he had pulled the screen closed and fallen asleep earlier than usual, a combination of stress, panic, anxiety and catatonia had exhausted him as badly as he ever had before, this morning he had awoken two hours before his duty shift, showered and shaved, combed his hair and made sure that his new uniform was clean and pressed. Unlike the dull beige technical uniform or the ill fitting flight suits he was used to, his new uniform was an all in one jumpsuit with a myriad of pockets and holders for miscellaneous gear. He'd asked the quartermaster about what the Deck Sergeants in the Scanner Hub tended to requisition, the return of most of his technicians gear, a very long list and a few hefty cash deposits later and he had what he believed he needed to begin his first day.

Brushing himself down he looked in the mirror and stared at his reflection wondering for the umpteenth time whether or not he was doing the right thing, for years all he had known was routine maintenance and incompetent subordinates, now he would be said subordinate and that worried him far more than he would like to admit. Sighing to himself he gently attached his brand new blue coloured Sergeants stripes to the velcro patch on his arm directly underneath the small silver pin, it was a stark reminder of the differences that surrounded his life right now. If he succeeded then the blue stripes with its accompanying silver badge would be replaced by as set of red stripes and gold badge of a true Deck Sergeant, a rank that equalled that of a full Petty Officer.

Pressed and dressed to impress he picked up the last piece of his new uniform, it was strange that in all the years he had been with the company that he had never had to use any kind of headgear with regularity. Except a couple of hard hats and his dress uniform cap on irregular occasions, there had been no need. Now it seemed that he had a god-awful and uncomfortable standard issue watch cap that was required as part of his duty uniform, maybe it would improve once he'd broken it in but for now he'd do his best not to have to use it.

Folding it up carefully he slid it under the epaulette on his shoulder before tucking it down as best he could, sighing again he looked at himself in the mirror, sleep had been hard coming for the last few days after his decision and he looked it. Even after ten hours of mostly restless sleep he looked exhausted and worried, something he rarely let anyone see no matter how bad it got, he only hoped that his new boss would understand that. Grabbing his old trusty briefcase and stepping out of his quarters he strode down four flights of stairs and across the ship's central throughway to the entrance of the Scanner Bay.

For the first time in a decade and a half, Arnold J Rimmer, Temporary Deck Sergeant began a new job and a new career.

 ** _Primary Scanner Hub._**

 ** _Deck 124_**

"Sergeant, I'm Scanner Tech Rodrigo Inez, welcome to Deck 124. Did you find your way around alright." A smallish lean man walked up to Rimmer startling the taller man didn't stop Rimmer from saluting him with a full Rimmer confusing Inez, shaking his head Inez simple saluted back normally."

"Just a little mistake with my new quarters but everything else is tickety boo."

Nonplussed the tech continued on gesturing for Rimmer to follow him "Well if you follow me I'll show you to the Chief."

Rimmer followed Inez as they continued down into the Sensor Hub, the room was immense, easily the largest single room he had been inside while on board Red Dwarf excepting the cargo and hanger bays. More than thirty men and women were watching the multitude of scanners the mining ship had active, every particle, every speck of dust, rock, stellar detritus and man-made garbage for tens of thousands of kilometers was picked up and catalogued here.

Radar, Infra-Red, Ultraviolet, LIDAR, a dozen different radiation sensors not to mention the hundreds of cameras both inside and outside the ship giving the sensor room a full image of space around them. Along one wall dozens of huge computers were constantly running, updating and overwriting old data every second, billions of calculations and records replacing day old information before starting again with the next batch.

Another wall carried the huge communications board, a sixteen foot square monitor that could show dozens of reports and conversations sent between sections or expand one message to a huge size, the first thing that came to Rimmer's mind was simply _*No way in hell does Lister find out about that.*_

Passing through the middle of the room he was made aware that what he saw was only the tip of the iceburg, the Scanner Hub was far more than a simple 'Hub' the entire complex reached down two decks and up another two. It was immense, thousands of computer systems, monitors, displays, control systems and more covered every inch of every surface he could see, it was what he had long expected the Drive Room to look like and now he was all but in shock.

"Yeah, that happens with most people when they get here. Ship's a little old so her scanner systems are a little less than state of the art, the newer ships only need one, maybe two decks." A man walked up to them amused at the gawking. "Only the mid-deck is manned at all times, a couple of techs make runs to the other decks every couple of days, but most of it is automated these days, guess the JMC preferred to cut the crew back instead."

"It's incredible."

"That it is Sergeant." Inez agreed grinning at the new arrival, "Deck Sergeant Rimmer, Tech Corporal Robert Connors."

"The new scanner wizard huh?" Connors held out his hand "Sergeant."

"Connors." Rimmer continued his tradition of using his own salute once again confusing the man in front of him who just saluted in kind, Rimmer and Inez left the other man behind as they approached a door at the far end of the room. "Scanner Wizard?"

"When we heard we were getting another face around here, the Chief looked into your record, your score for the exam was only below the Chief and the Master Chief. If you are half as good as your score says, you'll fit in well here."

"I didn't think it was that special, I missed some of the easier questions." Rimmer replied, "I'm surprised I passed at all."

"Well you did, so welcome to the Scanner Bay, oh and Sir a word of advice, the Chief prefers things done a certain way down here, that salute you've been using. I wouldn't with him, no-one else would really care but the Chief might well send you back where you came from." Inez advised Rimmer before they crossed the threshold, "He'll ask questions and expect answers, just tell the truth and you'll be fine."

Swallowing against a dry throat Rimmer merely nodded and the two walked into the office of the Chief of Sensor Operations, as the doors closed behind them the noise of the Scanner Hub ceased, the sudden silence startling the newly minted Sergeant who looked back over his shoulder in shock, a slight laugh came from table at the other end of the room causing him to turn back just as quickly, behind it a broad shouldered dark skinned man sat in a tall leather backed chair with a smile on his face.

"That gets almost everyone once they come in here, you get used to it after a while." The man stood up and came around the table, "Deck Sergeant Rimmer I presume."

"Yes Sir, Deck Sergeant Arnold Rimmer reporting for duty." Rimmer saluted the man with a standard version, nervous about his first day with a new section, an actual superior who would notice anything he did good or bad and the fact that he was no longer in command of his own staff, albeit it a smelly gerbil faced waste of human flesh.

"Master Chief Petty Officer Michael Henderson." he saluted back before offering Rimmer his hand to shake, surprised again he reciprocated shaking the outstretch appendage. "So I've looked over your test results, both sets."

"Yes Sir." Rimmer said still at attention.

"For Christ's sake Rimmer at ease before you hurt yourself." Henderson nodded before turning back and leaning against the side of his desk, "We're not quite as hidebound down here as the technical or systems sections, I've heard of you before Mr Rimmer and while nothing I heard was good I'm not going to let it colour my view of your work, I've seen academy graduates that had lesser scores that you did when it comes to the exams and that impressed me before you even stepped into this hub."

"Sir..."

"Ok a few things Sergeant, I've looked through your records and some things have got to change in your actions around here, I'm aware that you think there are ways to do things and sometimes they are your own affectations but believe me with the work you've got ahead of you, you won't have the time to think about them. First of all you call me 'Chief' or 'Chief Henderson', not Sir or Mike or anything else."

"I wouldn't take the liberty Sir... Chief."

"We'll work on it Sergeant, it's not easy to break a habit like that. Secondly, right now you don't have the responsibility to order around anyone on the floor, you can give suggestions and requests but you do not order any of my people until I tell you, you can understood?"

"Yes Chief." Rimmer blinked as he felt a slight weight fall from his shoulders, he'd expected to have to order people around without any real idea what he was doing, he should have expected that he would have to undergo his own training before anything like that happened. He held the sigh in but felt his muscles loosen slightly, the Chief nodded approvingly at that.

"Third, you'll be training with Technician Inez here, he's one of the best we have in third shift which is the shift you've been assigned to for your tenure, any questions go through him and only him. At the end of each week he'll forward me his observations of your work, I'll also get reports from the shift supervisor every two weeks for the same reason. Your test results tell me that you've got some skills Sergeant, you've been given a chance here, so my advice? Don't screw this up Mr Rimmer or we'll put you back into the technical section. Clear?"

"Clear Chief."

"Good, go get a cuppa and Inez will walk you through some of the basics, once he thinks you are ready you'll be attached to a scanner team for the next few weeks to see how you handle it." Henderson nodded to the Tech, "Ok gentlemen you have your orders. Welcome to the Scanner Hub Mr Rimmer."

Outside the office Rimmer relaxed and caught his breath, anyone could see that he had been on edge for most of the meeting, the chief had been genial but huge in stature, only Rimmer's unwavering respect for authority only just edging out his body's typical 'run like hell' reaction to the Chief.

"Yeah he's a big guy but he's a good boss." Inez patted Rimmer on the back, "You ok?"

"Fine, I'm absolutely fine. Shall we go?" Rimmer composed himself and turned with a wan smile.

"Alright then, come on."

Z Shift had had their own restroom of sorts, fitted out for a dozen technicians the place had been empty most of the time, with only himself and Lister using it they hadn't had the credits between them to really make the place that comfortable. The tea and coffee making facilities had likewise been wholly lacking due to the same reasons, however the 'breakroom' for the scanner section was a very different beast indeed.

He should have expected it, with over thirty personnel sharing it with other shifts of the same size, the break room was huge and well stocked, sofas, chairs and a number of curtained off bunks were in evidence, a half dozen modern dispensing machines were set into the wall to the side of the entranceway, well maintained and clean as a whistle, his own maintenance teams both before and after joining Z Shift had never worked on anything that impressive. Walking in he noticed that there were a handful of people on a break while one was reclining on a bunk dozing, a paperback book lying on his chest.

"Not too shabby huh?"

"It's incredible."

"It's just the break room, once we get you situated we'll sort out your donation to the fund but for now don't worry about it, we got a credit drop when you were transferred, you're paid up for the next two weeks." Inez went to the dispenser ordering a couple of drinks while Rimmer continued to look around. Sitting on one of the chairs closest to the dispensers, he looked down at his notebook and pens, he had a feeling that he was really going to need them for the next few days as he began to learn the ins and outs of his new job.

"There we go." Inez plopped down the cup in front of him, hesitantly Rimmer picked it up for a taste and was pleasantly surprised that it actually seemed to be a decently made cuppa, unlike the machine in the technician's rest room which used to dispense a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. "So what do you want to know?"

"Umm, not sure to be honest. I've been in maintenance for the majority of my career, where do we start?"

"First thing's first Sir, with a ship's crew this small things get around here and there and well your name has been doing the rounds for a while, I won't say anything right now but needless to say there are some things you might hear from people who have friends in other sections, the Chief doesn't give a damn about rumours or what you might have done before but he'll make sure you know about it if you screw up."

Rimmer winced at that, he knew that people usually had a downer on him, sometimes even those people who had never met him before, he should have guessed that rumours about him would have been circulating. Hell Lister and his ape-like flunkies would have said anything to make him look bad, true or not. Still he knew that some of his accomplishments must have made the rounds if everyone on this team knew about him.

"So my accomplishment with the exams is well known is it?"

"Not just that Sergeant, can I be straight forward with you." He paused as Rimmer thought about it and then slowly nodded. "This is a big ship but the crew isn't that big, most people know the rest of the crew and stuff gets thrown about. Most of us know of you, that you can be a bit officious, a bit too stiff and by the book, that may have been how it worked for you in the technical ranks but here we're a lot more relaxed. Most of your little habits like that salute or putting people on report won't wash here, right now you are a probationary NCO which means that in all reality you don't have any actual rank in the structure."

"Like a midshipman?" Rimmer nodded along, several of his personal library had books from all number of military lines, from historical notes and diaries to military fiction, midshipmen, third lieutenants and the like were scattered throughout history as those who were there to learn but had no power to begin with. No real difference in his life to date then.

"Something like that." Inez leaned back, "You are here to learn how to be a sensor monkey and maybe how to be a boss, but you need to keep your wits and head about you and listen to everything people say. Forget everything you've learned and you think you know, you are part of a team of experts now ok."

"Ok." Rimmer was somewhat taken aback at this frank discussion, Inez was a scanner tech, one of what was likely to be a couple of dozen in each shift but he was talking to him as an equal and treating him with some decency, something that he had never really had before on this ship, not to mention that he was warning Rimmer off of some of the things he did that he thought had impressed people. "Everything?"

"Everything, right here and now you are back to basics, even your former rank is now technically higher than you are. You've been in the service a while right?" Rimmer nodded his head, "Well now you get to see just what we are really capable of on this rust bucket..."

During the weeks that followed Rimmer found himself inundated with technical information, ident codes, scanner data and more specifications for his job than he had ever known had existed, each day he worked through a full shift with a crew, learning what he needed to know to keep up with the other members of the scanner teams and asking questions when he needed to know.

His day was full enough that the usual thoughts of failure and his inability to rise in the ranks rarely crossed his mind, each shift ended after the usual eight hours but for him continued until the next crew chief told him to take his work back to the bunkroom. It was unusual to find him outside of the scanner room or his quarters buried in his notes and books borrowed from the ship's library, anybody that had known Rimmer during his time aboard any of the ships he had served on would have been surprised at his determination.

Multicoloured revision timetables and meticulously kept folders had been replaced with dog eared notebooks, half used pens and pencils and loose paper containing the in depth notes of everything he had been taught by the scanner techs and anything else he could wring out of the text books. What had shocked him the most was just how much he truly understood regarding the scanners, he had always had a affinity with numbers, colours and shapes but it had never occurred to him just what that could mean.

Combined with his bull headed determination to keep things in order, he had found himself more than once glued to a scanner screen and tagging every single thing in range with a code, sometimes finding himself running over his own allotted time and being reminded he had other work to do. A slight foible that he was beginning to overcome as he learned how to delegate the work across his team.

That had been another startling change for the former technician, while he was not part of the team yet, he had noticed that each of the people on his shift still kept him informed as changes happened, allowed him to get involved and listened to his ideas. His team had long since gelled together and even with himself as some kind of johnny-come-lately, he had been welcomed and helped when he was in over his head without even asking.

He had noticed that the rest had been happy or at least content with their work, unlike himself and Lister on Z Shift, everyone seemed to work in step, if something went wrong then anybody who knew what was wrong would step in to assist the rest. If someone was unsure they asked and were not felt to be a burden, something that he was thankful for considering the amount of times he felt in over his head.

Fortunately as the weeks passed he had found his place and more often than not knew what he was doing, he would return to his notes when and if necessary as he learned, for the first time seeming to actually not only know what he was doing but to be of use to the rest of the team. For the first time in living memory he was truly enjoying everything he was doing, not to mention was able to relax around other people and have them relax around him.

Regarding said relaxation, as someone who had rarely drunk much in the way of alcohol in his life, since he had joined the team he had woken up in several odd places along with others of the crew, most of them nursing a hangover that took them several days to budge.

Those days he wasn't in pain or otherwise incapacitated he continued to study his new duties, while not as anal retentive as he had been, Rimmer had discovered that there was far more to his job than people expected and he was duty bound to do it to the best of his abilities. He had pushed his luck more than a few times and been reeled back by the others, he had considered pulling rank once or twice but had been brought up short as he remembered he didn't actually have a rank to begin with.

For Rimmer things were going as well as they ever had for him, he loved his job, he liked his fellow scanner jocks and he was having fun both on and off duty. However as was always for him the smeg hit the fan and he found himself at the arse end of a major emergency, something that for a long time would have had him scurrying for cover under a table somewhere but at this moment in time caused a different reaction.

The first thing he noticed was the crash of the main diagnostic circuits, the scanner relays and the lights, then the rapid activation of the secondaries, the dimmer less powerful lights coming up to full power allowing the crew a limited ability to figure out what the hell was going on and just how much smeg they were in.

"Connors what was that?"

"Not a clue Sergeant." Connors looked over his readouts, "That's odd."

Rimmer got up from his position at the command console and looked over the same readouts, across an entire stretch of the scanner emitters the readouts had turned red and black, one or the other was usually a problem especially with a ship as old as Red Dwarf but both at the same time meant something serious was afoot.

"Holly." Rimmer called up to the computer's pickup, "Contact Chief Henderson and CPO Waddle, have them come down here as soon as they can."

"Right you are Sergeant."

"Was there anything that looked odd before this happened?" Rimmer asked his subordinate.

"No Sergeant, the readouts were clear for the first time in a while."

"Well that should have told us something was wrong for a start." Rimmer frowned,

"Sorry..."

"Forget it Connors, you weren't to know."

A second shake ran down the ship's structure causing one or two of the scanner team to lose footing or half filled cups to fall over, Rimmer held onto the console as it ran through managing to keep his feet under him. A shudder powerful enough to move the ship meant that something critical had happened to the ship, a third caused him to collapse over the console. Rimmer pushed himself up and looked around. "Connors."

"Sergeant, we've lost the entire short range system." Surely enough the scanner readouts were completely down, the entire short range scanner system was the same red and black as the first to be effected. Another shake hit them before another voice came from behind him.

"Internal scanners are failing, we're losing it at five percent every ten seconds."

"Smeg." Rimmer swore, "Holly where's the Chief?"

"Chief Henderson is in the drive room."

"Drive Room?" Rimmer snarled, "Great that's all we need."

"Reading intermittent failure of the long range sensors in the forward arc."

"A cascade failure?" Rimmer said to himself before looking up, that was supposed to be impossible with the safeguards in place. "Lock down the long range sensors, disconnect any links to other scanner groups and power down for a full reset. Shut down short range sensors completely and let them discharge, internal scanners, isolate the failing sectors and lock them out, bring the rest to minimal power. Alert the Drive Room and secondary bay that we're going to be flying blind for the next few hours."

"Aye." The team chorused.

"Holly, send a message directly to the chief engineer. Bring ship to full stop, all scanner systems compromised, sign it with my authority."

"Yes Sergeant." Holly nodded before disappearing.

"Put readouts up on the main board." Rimmer ordered, each of the sensor sections transmitted the readouts from their board onto the main screen, the damage was extensive with almost half of the ship's entire scanner assembly offline. The red of damage and black of unknown failures dotted the length of the ship, a cascade failure on this scale was all but impossible due to backups and safeguards in place, but it was known from time to time that older vessels carried that risk.

"Inez, what do you make of this?"

"Cascade failure Boss, the entire system is shutting down. Isolating the systems saved the long range system but everything else is going to collapse."

"We need short range sensors back somehow." Rimmer looked around, "Suggestions anybody?"

"We have the shuttlecraft boss?" Hernandez put in, "But connecting them into a network and tying them into the ship runs the risk of a failure in their systems."

"What about putting in a single channel I/O instead, connect in from the outside but nothing goes back out to the shuttles?" Rimmer asked.

"It's possible, it would mean a longer resolution and comparison time but we'd get some short range back."

"Hernandez grab Brown, Hicks and Davis and co-ordinate with the shuttle controllers. Inez, put together a team to build up a converter for the data we'll be getting in." Rimmer ordered before shouting over the room to the far end, "Roboute, get on the comms to second shift and tell them we need them up here now, make sure they are suited up for a full check of the short range systems and the internal scanners. The rest of you stay at your posts and let me know the second that anything looks like it's going to fail. Lets get to work."

"Yes Sir" They chorused.

"Holly."

"Sergeant Rimmer."

Arnold turned to the massive screen and gave more orders, " Kill the power to the primary relays, and contact the drive room, have them sound Red Alert..."

"Hold it Mr Rimmer that won't be necessary." A familiar accented voice came from the gantryway at the entrance, Arnold spun around to see Captain Hollister, Commander Todhunter, Chief Henderson, Chief Waddle and one of the exam invigilators he had met once or twice before, Commander Nadine something or other. "Alright everyone, back to work. Holly return the systems to normal please."

"Right you are Captain."

Each of the scanner section's monitors flicked momentarily before changing back to the actual readings, the damage reports and crashed systems were back online and working as expected. A slight waver rippled through the room as the gravity systems realigned with the rest of the ship, the minor shudders ceasing as it did. Rimmer looked around in surprise as his crew relaxed and returned to their stations, one or two of them giving him a wink or a cheeky salute as they did.

"Sir." Rimmer's confused look never changed as he turned back to the Captain before coming to attention and saluting the normal way as he had long since stopped using the 'Rimmer Salute' when greeting senior officers. Rimmer waited until Hollister returned his greeting before dropping back to an at ease posture. "Sir, what's going on?"

"That Sergeant was a test, Chief Henderson decided that it was time to see if you had actually learned anything in the last nine months and it seems you have." Hollister walked down the steps to the lower deck, the other ship's officers and non-coms following him down, each with a po-faced expression leaving a lead weight in Rimmer's stomach. Hollister walked across to the command section direct across from the Sergeant, how own face still set in a stern expression, one he hadn't seen from the Captain in a long while.

"As with all probationary terms there are times when you are required to be tested, to see if you are truly capable of taking on the tasks that you were set." The portly Captain said directly to the Deck Sergeant his tone unchanged, "This test was one of those times, to gauge your fitness to command and to remain as part of one of the primary scanner crews aboard this ship. Chief Henderson and Commanders Todhunter and Crane have all come to the same conclusion, I'm afraid Mister Rimmer that I'm going to have to ask for your stripes and insignia.""

"Sir?"

"Sorry Rimmer but you are no longer entitled to wear those stripes."

"But Sir, I thought..." Rimmer sighed as he pulled the temporary pin from his uniform, the velcro stripes coming away just as easily. "I'm sorry I let you down Sir."

"Nothing to be sorry about Mr Rimmer, you did your best but you will however need to wear these." Hollister held out a hand, sat there in the palm sat the deep red stripes and gold pin of a fully authorised Deck Sergeant, Rimmer's eyes bulged out as the full import hit him. "Arnold Rimmer, by the power invested in me by the Jupiter Mining Corporation and the Space Corps as Commanding Officer Jupiter Mining Corporation Ship Red Dwarf, I am very pleased and pleasantly surprised to promote you to the permanent effective position of Deck Sergeant with all the rights and privileges of that rank."

"Ten hut." The Chief shouted, the entire room snapping to attention including Rimmer himself before he could stop himself.

"Take your command, Deck Sergeant."

"Aye Sir." Rimmer beamed as he saluted the Captain who returned the action before nodding to the newly minted NCO in dismissal, walking over to Connors Rimmer returned the other man's salute, the first he had ever been given by someone else. "Corporal I relieve you."

"I stand relieved, in more way that one Sergeant." Connors smiled, "The deck is yours."

Applause and cheers erupted from across the entire floor, hand shakes and hugs came from virtually every member of the third shift scanner team, the smile on Rimmer's face was the largest and most legitimately happy one that he had even been fortunate enough to have. He was informed that there would be a blow out that night due to the crew having the next four days off duty, in recognition of his new rank and position.

A barked order from Chief Henderson sent the myriad of well-wishers scurrying back to their posts before walking up to his newest NCO and congratulating him, the man's moustache twitching as the man allowed himself a small smile and nod at Rimmer's actions. Hollister, Todhunter and Crane had already left by the time Rimmer had finally been able to summon himself back into some semblance of calm.

It was a really good day.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Chapter 7_**

It was a bad, bad morning.

Rimmer moaned as the dim light of the cabin stabbed into his eyes, slamming them shut he coughed harshly as the smell of stale smoke, several different piles of digested mush and a couple of dozen stinking bodies assailed his senses. Half way to vomiting himself Arnold struggled to sit up to rub at his aching head, his left hand refused to obey completely while the right was blocked somehow by something inside his crooked arm.

Squinting he saw the offending item, it's orange and white design well known to the drivers of ground, hover and hopping vehicles across the entire solar system, the only thing going through his pain filled mind was simply _Where the smeg could he have possibly got a traffic cone from, hundreds of thousands of miles from the nearest traffic lane?_

"Oh god, someone please shoot me." Came a voice from a couple of bodies away from him.

"Rod?"

"Boss?" Chang looked up and over at the barely upright torso of his new crew chief

"Rod, what the hell happened?"

"Umm, Parrots... that's all I can remember, oh and something about an ice cream cone and an elephant."

"An elephant?"

"You got me Boss."

"Can you guys let it go, some of us are trying to sleep down here." A female voice came from a head laying across Inez's legs next to Rimmer.

"Di, do you remember anything?" Chang spoke up before moaning again, "If I try to think I'm going to throw up.

"Where are we?" The blonde tech said with her eyes still squeezed closed.

"Umm, I have no idea, I can't open my eyes long enough to see." Rimmer gave up trying to stay upright and collapsed back on the ground, his left arm hitting something painfully on the ground. "Ow smegger."

"Boss?"

"I'm alright I..." Rimmer trailed off as he forced his eyes open to examine his pained arm, the jacket he had been wearing was long since gone and it seemed that the buttons on the wrist of his shirt had been torn off at some point, the same point her had apparently gotten a new accessory. "I think I'm handcuffed to somebody."

"You go boss." Connors' voice came from behind him, hefting himself up once again he noticed that the bodies of most of his thirty strong crew were sprawled out across the huge room on the floor where they had collapsed, he had a very strong inkling that they had been in a conga line at the time. "Umm has anyone see my trousers?"

"Nope but can anyone tell me where I got the gas mask from?" Came the voice of his right hand man, Inez was finally coming to from the noise of the others waking up, he lifted up the aforementioned mask on one finger before dropping it down again. "And I think I'm laying on something I'd rather not think about."

"Well I've got six telephone numbers on my arm and a security man's ID card." Diana Landon said from her place on his leg.

"I got a traffic cone." Rimmer put in.

"Where the smeg did you get a traffic cone out here?"

"I'm not worried about that, I'm worried about who I'm handcuffed to."

"That would be me." Yet another new voice came from the other end of the handcuffs, a female voice came from under a large mass of red hair that now resembled something so much as a thorn bush. The voice was familiar to Rimmer somehow and as she pulled her hair away from her face the now-Sergeant's eyebrows met his hair line, "I do assume that nothing untoward happened Mr Rimmer."

"Commander Crane?" Rimmer's headache disappeared in a rush of adrenaline as he realised just how this would look to outsiders, a newly minted NCO chained to one of the ship's senior officers and both in a less than suitable state for anything short of a Stig of the Dump lookalike contest, he rubbed his face with his free hand feeling the roughness of his stubble along with some encrusted debris that he would rather not think about.

"How exactly did I manage to become caught up in this Sergeant?"

"I don't know Ma'am." Rimmer started looking through his pockets for the key, "I didn't have these last night, Ma'am when did you become part of this?"

"I believe that I found my way into the Parrots bar at some time last night after my shift, I remember a celebration going on for several newly minted officers and NCOs, I think I was pulled into the celebration and apart from something to do with an elephant, I'm at a complete loss."

"That bloody elephant, does anyone know what it was?"

"Shut up Rodney." Came a chorus of voices, several more of Rimmer's scanner crew were coming around as they looked up and collapsed back down, he would be surprised if any of them really knew what had happened to them.

"I'd do a sound off but I can't remember my own name." Inez coughed in pain, "How many people do we have here?"

"I dunno I can't count that high right now." Chang replied

"When did we get so many twins?" came back from Barton as he slowly sat up, eyes crossing before collapsing back on the floor. "Oh hey there's a pair of trousers on the ceiling."

"What where?" Connors asked looking up. "Uhh, nope not mine damn."

"Hey those are mine, but I'm wearing mine?" Came a low voice from elsewhere, "Oh wait, never mind."

"I hate to interrupt this amusing aside." Commander Crane interrupted, "but does anyone actually know where the smeg we are?"

"Umm Paris?" Came a smart arse answer from an unidentified voice, "No it's too clean for that."

"Mimas?"

"Casablanca."

"Aaaassss tttttiiiimmmmeeee gggooooooeeessssw bbbbbyyyyyy... OW." The same voice yelped in pain as someone else hit him in the side causing an explosive regurgitation of anything that may have remained in the man's stomach. "HHHHHGGGGGHHHHKKKKKKGGGGG"

"Thanks a smegging lot Samuals." Inez snarked, "Impressive distance though."

"Might have broken the record with that one."

"Screw you guys." The unidentified voice replied far from happy, "And we're on cargo deck nine."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I'm handsome, intelligent, well read..."

"And there's a sign on the wall isn't there."

"Uhh, yeah."

"Well I'll take what I can get." Diana said as she snuggled up to Linda, her erstwhile bunkmate and partner in crime as well as her sister in law and best friend. "Do we have to move?"

"Well the doors closed and the lights are dimmed down, unless someone comes in we're fine." Inez replied before groaning as a host of objects rained down on his from the other members of the gang, "What?"

"You just challenged Murphy you stupid great berk." Barton snarled back, "In three... two... one..."

Nothing happened.

"Huh, what do you know?" Inez smiled to himself, sometimes nothing does happen.

"Well I'm still counting, if it's anything under twenty minutes I'm gonna castrate you with a rusty chisel."

"You'd have to find it first." Chang shot back, "Now shut up and let me sleep."

"Forget it Chang." Rimmer groaned as he continued trying to find the key to the handcuffs, "Anyone got the key to these things."

"I think they are tied to the trousers on the ceiling boss."

"How the hell did it get up there?"

"Who's are they?"

"Get them down and find out?"

"I'm handcuffed to an officer Corporal, what makes you think I can get to them?"

"Sucks to be you then."

"I could order you to get them."

"I'm off the clock Boss."

"Yeah and think of what I can do to you when you are back 'on the clock' you inbred cretin."

"Smeg."

"Smeg indeed matey, but right now I'm too hungover to care, I'll bust you down to lightbulb polisher when I'm more awake." Rimmer replied, "And when I can get that key down."

"So keep the key away from you and you can't bust Chang down?"

"No I'll still bust him down, but I'll bust anyone who helps him."

"One day with a rank and he thinks he's Patton." came from Connors

"I was Alexander the Great's chief eunuch."

"I was Julius Caesar's pillow fluffer, guy had really bad piles."

"I was Cleopatra's."

"Cleopatra's what?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I was Queen Victoria's pooper scooper!"

"I was Napoleon's false right hand!"

"I was Nelson's lost eye."

"I was the last man standing at the Battle of Forth Bridge!"

"Wasn't that a footie riot?"

"No the other one, tupperwear and handbags at three thirty!"

"I think I'm still drunk." Inez moaned

"Huh I've half a bottle of vodka." Came from Edwards, one of Rimmer's energy specialists

"Share it out?" Hernandez prodded

"I can't, it's in my trouser pocket."

"So?"

"Those are my trousers up there."

"Right give me a leg up." Hernandez managed to pull himself to his feet, the chance of free alcohol never ignored.

"Without my trousers, do me a lemon."

"Fine, where's the ladder."

"There isn't one."

"So how did we get them up there."

"I think we climbed." Edwards looked up at the roof again

"Climbed, are you crazy?"

"Yep, but that's never stopped me before." Edwards shrugged, "Apparently it didn't this time either."

"So it's either get the trousers and the key and the vodka, or leave it up there and get a smegged off boss and a busted down Inez?" Inez said out loud, people ignoring his use of the third person. "We need a ladder."

"Or a big pole."

"Hmm." Connors smirked to herself, "Hang on a sec, I've got an idea."

 ** _Medi-Bay_**

 ** _Psychology Wing_**

 ** _Dr Brannigan's Office_**

"Ahh Sergeant Rimmer, Welcome and please come inside."

"Doctor, umm..."

"Come in and shut the door my good man, I don't believe that you have ever taken advantage of my services before have you?"

"No Sir, I've never thought I needed to."

"And what changed your mind may I ask?"

"Things change Sir, I've had to spend a lot of my time recently learning a hell of a lot of new information, changing habits that I'd spent years cultivating and finally trying to find out if I could be someone else."

"Change is always happening Sergeant, some of it good and some of it bad." Brannigan nodded, "What was the catalyst for this change?"

"A mistake, a single mistake that changed everything."

"Well it seems to be Sergeant that you could do with a lot of help from myself and the rest of the psychiatric staff, I think that the deep seated roots that kept you from fulfilling your full potential in life need to be exorcised before you can truly be at peace with yourself. Your life with your family, the time afterwards and also being forced into a duty you didn't really want but have decided to live with. It will take time and effort on both our parts to bring you out of this shell you have around yourself, even though it seems to be you are making a concerted effort to break through it yourself."

"My crew are good people Sir, they've managed to figure me out pretty quickly."

"Nonetheless I suggest you begin a course of psychiatric treatment, twice a week for one hour each time, a full diagnosis will be forthcoming from this meeting and will be added to your personal file under medical confidentiality. Nobody except myself and the ship's CMO Doctor Newton will be allowed to view it unless otherwise noted, anything you say or reveal in these meetings will stay completely confidential."

"Do I have a choice Sir?"

"You always have a choice Sergeant, this is just a suggestion and not a medical demand, there is a lot inside you that you need to get out. In your own words you have told me that your potential has been buried by the demands of your parents and overshadowed by your brothers, however your jump from a Technician rank to your current position has shown you that you can succeed if you make your own decisions."

"I always have made my own decisions."

"Have you Mr Rimmer, or have you had them made for you through what you believe others have always wanted?" Brannigan leaned forward, "Don't answer this now, think about who you are and what you want to be, not what your parents wanted for you. I'll pencil you in for a two hour session next week with me, usually for first time patients you would go to one of the counselling staff but I believe that you may be better served with my own help."

"If you say so Sir."

"I do Sergeant, in fact I have a few suggestions for you. A few things that might allow you to fight your way free of your own doubts, I want you to..."

 ** _Scanner Team NCO Bunk Rooms_**

Rimmer sat alone in the barracks central room, for the first time in several weeks he had finally been able to set aside a few hours to compose a letter that he had been waiting to send for a good while now, since his promotion had been made substantive he had thought time and again about how to reveal to his relatives about how his life had changed, he wasn't an officer but he was no longer a lowly technician and oddly enough he was far more comfortable with that than he expected.

He had long since packed away his calligraphy pens, paints, pencils and all the other tools that he once used to create his study timetables, however he had left a few sheets of paper and envelopes in his desk alongside his favourite fountain pen. He had bought it when he was very young and had found his love for the written word, he had managed to keep it out of the hands of his brothers and the kids at school right the way up to the current day.

Uncapping the pen he wiped away any excess ink that might have accrued and put it to the paper, before he could chicken out he began writing the letter with a combination of both dread and anticipation in almost equal measure.

 _Mother, Father_

 _It is with somewhat fleeting hope that you are well, I have not written in some time due to a number of changes that have effected my life during the course of the last twelve months, a technical error caused me to attend an exam that I was not registered for and while I took the exam the error was discovered and rendered null and void. However soon afterwards I was requested by the ship's Captain to retake the exam under the correct conditions, I accepted and took the exam two weeks to the day that the original was held._

 _To my own surprise and to the surprise of many of those I know aboard and the Captain himself, I passed the exam and as such I have been transferred from the maintenance section to the scanner and communications bays. This came with a temporary promotion to Deck Sergeant and command of a sensor shift numbering thirty personnel, after several months of training and studying I was put through a 'live fire' test without my knowledge, this culminated in my promotion and command being made permanent._

 _For the first time since I joined the Corps I finally made a difference, I found that I truly enjoyed my work and had managed to begin my journey through the ranks. It was then that I realised something, I am now one of the ship's senior scanner bay Non Commissioned Officers, a new job, new quarters and a pay increase several times that of my former technician grade. My team are competent and obey orders when given, something that has caused me to change some of my ways of command._

 _These changes have also led me to believe that I have finally understood what I am capable of, for years I pushed myself to become an officer, to head for my own ship command, to the Admiralty, I should have noticed long ago that this was never my own want or my own demands but those of the two of you. It is with this conclusion that I have decided that I do not wish to become an officer, but to climb the ranks to the seniormost NCO ranks in the service, I can be a leader of men, a man of honour by leading my men from the front._

 _Something I did learn from my years of study on military matters is that you listen to your senior NCOs, you talk to your sergeants and other ranks because they know the state of things better than many officers will. So I do not think I need to be an officer for things to work out, I do not want to be an officer, but I will get to the top of the lower ranks because it is where I need to be and where I want to be. This may not please Father but for once I am doing this for myself and not for anyone else, nobody else has a say in how I run my life and I refuse to bow down to others who think they know better._

 _My brothers have always been given that chance that I never was, you blamed me for so many things in your lives and I believed you, you broke me before I was out of primary school, scarred before I was a teenager. If I could then I would tell my younger self to get out, get away from the hellhole that I was forced to live in, with a half crazed miserable failure of a father, a cheating slut queen of a mother and three arrogant self important smegpots of brother. The day I got away I will always look back on as the first real day that I felt even a small amount of happiness, now I feel that more because I am making these choices for myself and not you._

 _I am aware that you will both think that this is worthless but I no longer care what you think, no member of that family has given a damn about what I do or how I have coped in the years away from you all, I have decided it is time that I do what I want to and ignore anything that was ever forced on me by you. I won't be surprised if I get a letter denigrating my choices, I'll be even less surprised if I get nothing at all from you, but that is as much your decision as this is mine._

 _Your son (for what it is worth)_

 _Arnold J Rimmer_

 _Deck Sergeant_

 _Chief: Scanner Team Three_

 _JMC Red Dwarf_

Laying down his pen Arnold reread the letter as it dried, his penmanship as always was perfect without a smudge anywhere on the perfectly straight lines of prose, some of the words seemed harsh but all things considered if he really wrote what he wanted to say then the letter would not have made it through the postal system without setting off a few of the censorship checks on the way.

Picking up the pen he signed the letter with his signature before cleaning off his precious implement and tucking it back into his desk, still staring at the letter he wondered if it was all really worth it, he could leave the letter be and not bother to contact any of them with the news, let his brothers find out through the grapevine and then tell their parents about it. But then if he did that then they wouldn't find out that he had made decisions of his own against anything that any of them wanted, he really couldn't be sure what would happen either way.

Folding the letter carefully he slipped it into an already addressed and stamped envelope, the front and rear written on with the same exacting care as the letter had been, while some things had changed for Rimmer others he still took pride in. No, he would send the letter and let the chips lay where they fall, he had nothing to prove to anybody anymore, his life, _his_ _career_ was his own.

With that revelation firmly embedded in his mind Arnold Judas Rimmer finally felt the remaining strain of expectation fall from his shoulders, realising that for the first time in his life he was free from the strain, the demands that had been put onto him throughout his life, now he is truly ready and willing to face whatever life could throw at him.

 ** _Drive Room_**

"And that is the report Sir, twenty replacement lenses were required for the short range scopes and three personnel are requesting transfer from the scanner bays to technical support or the hanger bay and if I may Sir?" Rimmer paused before Hollister nodded "Scanner Tech Miller should never have been assigned to the fourth shift, his mind and body were always capable but his heart was never in his job, he'll make an ideal electronics specialist in one of the main shuttle repair workshops."

"I'll take that under advisement Sergeant." Hollister replied before leaning back. "So Mr Rimmer how are you coping down in the Scanner Bay?"

"Best choice I ever made Sir, I'm busy, I have people who listen to me and are willing to actually spend time with me outside of work." Rimmer looked to the Captain, "I know you didn't have to do what you did Sir, but thank you, I hope to continue to prove the faith you have in me."

"Its been a year Mr Rimmer, you've not screwed up too badly in that time, no complaints about your work and no reports from you about any of your people that couldn't have been solvedby the chief, in all your work has improved beyond anything I could have guessed at any time since I took command of this ship." Hollister nodded with a satisfied look on his face, "I think you needed to take a good look at yourself and the skills you truly had and I'm glad you did, keep this up Mr Rimmer and promotional chances in the future are a lot higher than they were."

"I... thank you Sir that means a lot." Arnold threw up a salute before leaving back out the door to the Drive Room, as usual the immense space was taken up by the hustle and bustle of a ship underway, it was funny but to him he really could understand what was going on these days when perusing the command centres of the ship, he had even gone out of his way to learn the basics of some of the co-operation between ship's systems.

His good mood evaporated as he strode towards the door and almost collided with yet another reminder of his bad fortune, Kochanski looked him up and down with a barely contained look of disgust, even after six months of not even running into each other she was still the arrogant prig she had always been.

"Decided to fix yourself up before reporting on some useless little fact to get someone to notice you this time Rimmer, I'm surprised that the Captain didn't have Thornton drag you out in chains this time."

"How about you shove your opinionated head up your fat arse Kochanski." Rimmer snarled, he'd been having a good week and now the actions of this Scottish tart was pushing him back towards a bad moon. "I was ordered to the Captain's office to report on the scanner team's half year reports, actually doing some work instead of using other people's work and passing it off as your own. So get off your high horse, you have a problem with me 'Ma'am' then you say something to my face, if you can stomach getting your own words thrown back at you of course. Botanical Gardens, ten pm tonight, there'll be fewer witnesses to your verbal beat down."

Pushing past the astonished navigation officer she could only watch as the angry non-com stomped out the room and down the corridor, it was a few seconds before she collected herself and turned back to her work. Something however was niggling at her mind while she tried to, something had changed in the object of her derision, he had never been as willing to give a piece of his mind that way.

"Scanner Team?" She mused before turning to her screen and picking up her headset, "Access crew records, basic information."

"Access to crew records is limited to senior staff." Holly replied.

"Kochanski, Kristine Z, Secondary Navigational Officer."

"Access Approved, which record do you wish to see."

"Rimmer, Arnold J, Second Technician, Z Shift"

"That record is no longer available under that name."

"Access all records with the surname Rimmer."

"Accessing record, Rimmer, Arnold J, Deck Sergeant, Scanner Team Three."

"What the Smeg? Deck Sergeant, since when?"

"Deck Sergeant Rimmer was temporarily promoted to rank and transferred due to extremely high marks in Scanner Technical Exam, substantive promotion approved by Captain Frank Hollister three months ago."

Kris leaned back in her chair and stared at the readout on the screen, Rimmer had always been an inconsequential, incompetent and unlikeable toerag at the best of times, at his worst he was insufferable, selfish and downright petty. For him to be promoted to a position where he was not only senior to a large number of men and women, but one where he was called into the Captain's office to give mid year reports was something she could never have expected and couldn't believe, he really was more than he seemed.

And now she had to face someone she now realised she had never really known.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Chapter 10_**

 ** _Botanical Gardens_**

 ** _10pm_**

"Well?" Kris looked over the former technician, unlike the last two times they had met he was no longer a mess of stains or dressed in a neatly pressed flight suit, but this time he was back in normal shipboard dress, his old technical rank conspicuously missing from his chest but the three stripes and gold badge of a Deck Sergeant was evident on his upper arm. The records had been correct and not a joke, Arnold Rimmer had become a full NCO.

"Well what?" Rimmer replied.

"You were going to give me a 'verbal beat down' weren't you?" Kris snarked annoyed at the man, his entire demeanour seemed one of humour than anger, "You finally suck up enough to get yourself a rank and you think you can say what you like."

"Unlike some people Kochanski I didn't have to get mine on my knees, but given your dating history I doubt it ended there." Rimmer hit back, "I work for a living, not sitting around all day collating other's work and calling it your own, I know you dislike me for your own reasons, look down on me for being a lowly technician but here's something for you to think about. I've been on this ship over ten years and risen in the ranks, how far have you got hmm? Seven years in the service and still a navigation officer, oh that's right navigation officer second class, what were you when you left the academy?"

"That's got nothing..."

"Navigation officer second class, seven years and you haven't budged a iota, you might be an officer but not a very good one it seems."

"You try getting a promotion on a ship this badly kept, at least I made it to officer."

"I did get a promotion, twice in fact. I also managed to finally figure out what I wanted to do, what about you _Ma'am._ What exactly have you found out about yourself? How to end up bumping uglies with the least human-like being in the solar system? How to be a bitch and irritate people?" Rimmer growled, "The fact is Kochanski is that you think you know so much better than anyone else, good school, good grades, parents that gave a damn and for what? To be a second shift navigator on a clapped out mining ship in the arse end of the solar system? Well guess what? You smegged up, some of us actually give a damn about this ship and some of the people on it.

"You know stuck with Lister was probably one of the best things to happen to me, he screwed up my entire morning that day and now I command an entire sensor team, my career might not be going where I wanted it to go but it's not stuck where it was. I finally realised a hell of a lot about people like you, like half of the crew, you aren't worth my time or my respect."

"I heard about your transfer, how did you..."

"How did I succeed? How did I finally get out of a rut? I'm not as useless as you think _Ma'am_." Kochanski's teeth were set on edge by his constant use of that pejorative in that way. "But given you never tried to find out what I can do, I don't really care what you think, what you know came from rumour, bullshit from your ex-boyfriend and your own impression of me. I succeeded because I found out that I am a hell of a lot better at some things than I ever though, so I now know I'm able to do my job and do it well. So next time you think you can have a go at me like that, think twice, you can report me if you want, but make damn sure you get it right because I'll fight anything you try to pin on me."

Kochanski found herself more and more surprised at the man in front of her, for years she'd barely known he existed and the information she had was never complimentary, after all the officers for a long time had a saying, 'If a job's worth doing its worth doing well, if its not worth doing, give it to Rimmer.' The man had been useless and detested by the crew at large, yet more of his exploits were scoffed at by the officers, that the lowly technician thought he had a chance to be one of them was amusing as hell, never mind his upbringing on the richest moon in the outer system or his legendary family name. Rimmer would never be one of them and for the last few years bets had been made and thousands of dollarpounds had changed hands over how he would screw up, some had been disappointed that he hadn't tried taking the exam this year.

Now however he had seemed to find something inside him that had changed all that, she hadn't bothered keeping track of his progress since she had broken up with Dave, something that she was still unsure about. Her relationship with Tim had never really recovered from the break up, he had denigrated her about her fling with Lister and accused her of using the split to act like a hussy, the fact they had split up because he'd slept with her former roommate seemed to have completely passed him by.

"Who are you?"

Rimmer blinked at that, out of everything that she could have said, that question was not one that he had been expecting. His mouth opened and closed a few times in a half arsed impression of a guppy fish before he could engage his brain. "What?"

"Who are you?" Kris asked again, "Arnold Rimmer, who the hell are you?"

"I'm... what?"

Kris shook her head, "Arnold Rimmer, the one I met all those months ago wouldn't have faced an officer and told them off, the one I know wouldn't have brought up my own shortcomings or ripped me a new one like this, he would never have thought of it let alone told me to turn up here and now just to do so. Who are you?"

"I am Deck Sergeant Arnold J Rimmer, Chief of Scanner Team Three." Rimmer introduced himself. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Navigation Officer Second Class Kristine Z Kochanski, Secondary Navigational Officer, Third shift senior officer." Kris replied, "Its nice to meet you Sergeant."

"I think Ma'am." He said politely, "That this is going to be an interesting few weeks for us both."

For the next few months the relationship between the two changed immeasurably, for the first time since he was a child Arnold found himself in a proper friendship with a member of the opposite sex, weeks passed as they continued to talk. Ship based emails and face to face chats soon changed their opinions of each other, the walls that had been slowly collapsing around both all but shattered in their shared time together.

For Kris it was a chance to actually get to know the man that Arnold was becoming, the one break he had needed had begun changing him in ways that she could never have expected while for Arnold he was able to see the woman the Kris was behind the facade of her upbringing. His life on one of the richest most successful colonies was matched by her own within the more well to do areas of the home islands of the United Kingdom. Both had been expected to do better than they had by their parents but neither had been a successful as their families had demanded, nor had they been able to find a partner to continue the family name on as they had wanted. While the Rimmer family had the advantage of his three brothers and they ability to continue the lineage (although Arnold secretly wondered about Howard), the Kochanski's however were fully dependant on their only daughter.

Unbeknownst to both they were far more alike than they could ever have realised, both had found a kinship and a friend in the other, a friendship that would be needed desperately in the very near future.

Life is not without a sense of irony as it that for every great feat there can be a great calamity waiting in the wings, for the year that Arnold Rimmer had found himself a success would come to a quick and painful end for a large number of people and for the rest they would never know what happened to them as they were wiped from existence.

Red Dwarf as mentioned was a large ship, a massive heavy ship that had taken on all comers including a pair of mid sized asteroids imbedded in her belly and come out the victor, so for the entire vessel to rock even slightly meant that something serious had happened, not only serious but extremely bad, to cause the entire ship to buck and send the crew flying meant that they were in very deep smeg indeed.

Rimmer pulled himself up from the floor where the jolt had thrown him, the rest of the scanner teams were groaning as they returned to their seats, one or two had minor cuts or bruising on their faces but no-one seemed to be hurt.

"What on Io was that?" He asked clambering up the side of a console holding his ribs where he had caught the console as he was thrown forward. "By the numbers. Status. Hernandez."

"Long range scanners are down, we're not getting any power to the main systems." Hernandez groan grabbing his side with one arm, "Control systems are still online, barely."

"Connors?"

"Short Range forward scanners at half power, nothing coming in from main power, we're running on direct fusion from the ramscoop." Connors had a slight trickle of blood from ab ove her hairline.

"Inez."

"Short range rear offline, no power." The man looked non the worse for wear, he'd managed to stay seated as the rest went flying.

"Chang"

"Internal scanners online but compromised in several areas, we've got maybe sixty percent."

"What areas?"

"Intermittent across the entire rear quarter, no contact with secondary Scanner Bay, the mining decks, Engine decks one through nineteen, diesel decks one and two, supply and habitation decks forty four..." Chang looked the other man in the eyes. "Forty five and forty six."

"How compromised are we talking?"

"Completely dead, nothing on any wavelength, visual, IR, UV even the radiation sensors are gone." Chang looked at Rimmer, "Boss there's nothing at all coming from those decks, most of first and fourth shifts were on Forty Five and Forty Six."

"Shit." Rimmer swore before turning to the room's main communications screen, both Waddle and Henderson were on the engineering decks. "Holly put me through to the Drive Room, priority one."

"All channels to the Drive Room are in use, your call is currently in the line."

"Class One Override, Scanner Chief Authorisation, break into one if you have to." Rimmer ordered, Holly nodded as his face dropped off the screen as another took his place, the pale face of Kristine Kochanski looked back out at him. A nasty looking bruise covered her face from hairline to lower cheek, she'd hit something hard on the way down.

"Rimmer, what the hell.."

"Kris, this is an emergency." Rimmer cut her off. "We've lost all internal scanner readings across the engineering decks and at least three either side, all visual and radiation scanners have been lost."

"Shit, we've lost all internal comms across the rear third of the ship. Do you have any scanner data on those?"

"One sec." Rimmer looked up, "Chang divert all internal scanner data to the Drive Room and put it up on the main table."

On the central scanner table in the Drive Room a copy of the data assembled by his staff was brought up by Kochanski, the immense screen within the Scanner Bay itself showed a more in depth and higher resolution version of the ship's internals. Crew numbers and locations were mixed in with damage icons throughout the vessel, twenty four of the ship's three thousand decks were completely red and flashing, indications of total failure of the internal scanners across those areas.

"All decks except those we've lost contact with are still with us, we're reading damage across the entire ship." Chang put in, "We've got a current crew total Sir, nine thousand and ninety confirmed as still alive. Somebody down there got the containment doors down before whatever happened, whoever did that saved the rest of the ship."

"Holly, who ordered the closure of the containment hatches on those floors?" Rimmer asked

"The hatches were closed on the order of First Technician Alexander Kropotkin, team leader of Z shift." Holly replied.

Rimmer closed his eyes, Z Shift. Replacements for himself and Lister had been down there and had somehow saved most of the crew, he wondered if he had been in place would he have had the courage to do the same thing. He mentally shook himself, the old him wouldn't have thought twice about running away and trying to let someone else take the blame, even if he could have survived the blast the ship and everyone outside would have known it was his fault.

"Nine thousand, Good God." Kochanski's voice came through the comm interrupting his train of though, he agreed at her words, the ship's crew was over eleven thousand. "Rimmer as of right now I'm temporarily promoting you to Chief Petty Officer, without comms your scanner section is the only way we can co-ordinate what's going on here."

"Me?" Rimmer's eyes widened as he came out of his introspection, "Ma'am I'm a section leader not a Chief."

"Right now Mr Rimmer, we need you to do both. You are the section leader down there and we need to co-ordinate efforts across the ship, I'm releasing full access to Holly and what we've got of communications to you."

"Ma'am." Inez broke in, "The shuttlecraft and the majority of the control centers across the ship have mobile radios, we could use them to co-ordinate along with the internal sensors, we'll at least know what's going on in the dead areas."

"Good Idea, I'll get the deck crews to distribute radios across the areas they can get to, the rest will have to send out teams to make contact with the others. I'll make my way down there as soon as I can."

"Shouldn't you stay in the Drive Room Kris? The Captain might need your help."

Kris eyes darkened noticeably before she replied, "Captain Hollister was on the engineering decks on an inspection, whatever happened down there, he's in the middle of it."

"So who's in command?" Rimmer asked his friend before remembering something, the time since Todhunter left for the _Huntingdon_ had been filled by executive officers from different shifts, they had been too far out into the Solar System for the JMC to waste a ship just to drop off one officer. They would pick up the new second in command when the Dwarf pulled in at Titan before heading back to the inner planets.

"Right now... oh god... I am." Kochanski's entire face fell "I'm the duty officer."

"Alright that means we have some kind of authority in charge." Rimmer shifted into his more officious stature, something he rarely had to do these days. "Ma'am, Scanner Hub is at your disposal, we'll get people to the secondary hub and co-ordinate with them as well as the communication suites."

Rimmer's tone broke through her shock blinking she brought herself back to earth with a bump, "I'll be down within the next few hours, of course if the lifts are out we'll need to set up a direct unbreakable link between the two of us, the comms section and the aeronautics command centre. We'll use Holly's direct channels, they're hardened against just about anything."

"Will do Ma'am."

"Chief, we've got something." Came from Connors' position, the tall brunette was looking over her console rapidly typing away at a keyboard and looking over the visual input that was running over her monitors.

"What is it?"

"External scanners at the midpoint of the ship is showing an atmosphere leak from one of the airlocks on the engineering level..." Connors' eyes widened, "Smeg me."

"Connors focus here." Rimmer ordered.

"Chief, Ma'am, we're reading radiation leakage through the blown airlock."

 _Radiation leakage?_ Rimmer's eyes widened, he'd not been a tech for over a year now but fifteen years in the department had drilled certain things into him, a radiation leak capable of being read through an airlock could only be a very few things on those decks, from a faulty reprocessing valve to a blown drive plate.

"How bad?"

"Over a million roentgens and climbing." Connors whispered, "Sir..."

"I know Connors I know." Rimmer looked back up at the screen, "Kris, with that much radiation... we've blown a drive plate."

"A drive plate, but that would mean." Kris's face fell, "Everyone on those decks, everyone."

"Dead Kris, all of them." Rimmer shook his head, "That's the worst case scenario and the only one that would explain that high a reading, we need to send out a distress call."

"Distress call?

Rimmer's face stayed calm but inside his nerves were on edge _*Focus Kris Focus*_

"Commander, Orders." He snapped at her, his own nerves were being stretched to within an inch of their lives but right now he couldn't allow himself to feel that, he had too much work to do and too many people to take care of the allow it. It worked as Kochanski finally came back to herself, sitting up she put on the same mask that Rimmer was wearing, almost ten thousand people needed them right now.

"Alright Chief Rimmer, keep your people scanning around the ship as much as possible, contact the technical sections and see if they can trace the breaks in the internal scanner systems, try to co-ordinate the flight crews with them, give them authority to launch any of the small craft to move around the outside of the ship. If the lifts and trains are down we need to be able to get people between the sections." Kochanski ordered, "Send a runner down to the barracks, see how many of your people are still alive and get them to the secondary hub just in case."

"Hammond, Inez, Webber, barracks check. Chang secondary bay, take three techs with you. Use the nearest hanger bay and commandeer a shuttle to get there if you have to, authority from Scanner Controller and Drive Room."

"Yes Chief." They chorused.

"Its going to be a long day." Rimmer said to himself before looking back up at Kochanski, "Good luck Kris."

"To us all Ace, to us all."

 ** _Scanner Team NCO Bunk Rooms_**

Rimmer slumped back in his chair as he was finally able to take the weight off his feet, for more than forty hours he and his team had been co-ordinating the shuttles and remaining damage control teams scattered across the ship, pulling his boots off he sighed long and softly at the relief he felt. Ship issue boots were notorious as it was, having had to wear them for almost two days straight had been torture and given they hadn't had planet leave in months, he hadn't been able to use his newly acquired pay to buy a pair of new ones.

Scanner Team Three had been the only surviving full shift remaining after the accident, without replacements or assistance they had spent two days on constant duty, thirty men and women doing the work of one hundred and twenty as they themselves had been on the last day of their rotation. Over that time they had had a few people make their way to the bays, a few scattered members from the other five teams that had survived by the fortune of being elsewhere on the ship at the time, a few others that had transferred to other sections had been sent back to the scanner bay to help as best they could, forming an ad-hoc group to relieve his people.

He stopped and stared around at the room, it had been built for the use of ten Deck Sergeants or other NCOs of similar rank, it had only been half full in the time he'd been attached to the sensor bays, as it turned out three of them had been on one of the other contaminated habitation decks with their own teams while the other two had been in the engineering deck with the Captain leaving him as the sole surviving senior NCO for the remaining scanner crews. Now the entire place had a single occupant, himself.

While bogged down as a technician he would have been thrilled to have a room to himself, now however it was more a memorial to those who had been lost in the accident, sometime this week he'd be expected to pack up their belongings for forwarding to Earth. For a few of them that was useless as they had no family left, the others would be scattered to whatever settlements they had come from.

Reclining on his bunk he stared at the ceiling of his bunk, a little more brightly lit than his old one not to mention more comfortable, it was still obviously a hole bored out of a chunk of steel, even the soundproofed privacy screen was ill suited to making it feel any less like at best a hole or at worse a coffin. Now there was no point to the screen as the large room was as quiet as a tomb as it was, slowly Rimmer allowed his mind and body to relax before finally drifting off to sleep.

A few hours later he found himself interrupted by a loud knock at the hatchway, rolling out of bed he opened the door to the tired looking face of several members of his crew.

"What the smeg are you doing Myers?"

"Boss we've got a bit of a situation."

"So have I, it's called tired and pissed off boss syndrome."

"The senior officers are evacuating the two floors either side of the contamination, we're being turfed out of our rooms right now, we're being told to move up to this floor, because... well because."

"Because the people in most of them are dead or moved to another area of the ship." Rimmer scrubbed his face with a hand, "The entire team?"

"Yes Sir all of us."

"Fine, there's nine spaces in here and the one either side are empty twelve man units, the rest can find places in there. This place needs a clear out first, the rest of the Deck Sergeants' crap is still in here."

"Thanks boss." Myers looked up the corridor and whistled loudly, "We're in."

Rimmer sidestepped from the door as Myers was followed into the room by a group of the scanner team, most of them dragging bags or trunks with them as they shuffled in, given the already almost immaculate state of the room it only took the crew members a few minutes to find a bad each and claim the adjacent lockers. Rimmer dropped back onto his bunk at the far end and watched his people as each began clearing out the belongings of the former inhabitants as they added their own to the room, those belonging to the NCOs would be taken to the ship's stores and sent on to the deceased's family or returned to the ship's inventory.

He watched as the group settled down once they were done, there were enough sofas and chairs for the full dozen of them, they kept away from the one chair that seemed to still be in use as well as the bunk that had been messed up guessing those had been claimed by their own Sergeant. Nodding he slumped back down into said bunk, with the other NCOs usually assigned to other shifts he had rarely come into contact with the rest and so had usually spent his time away from the scanner bay on his own. He hadn't been in solid company in the bunk room since he had moved from the technicians' sleeping quarters a year earlier, now it seemed he would be entertaining almost a dozen others for the foreseeable future.

"Hey Boss?"

"Yes Inez, what is it?"

"How do you use these things?" The man gestured to the drop down screen above him.

"You pull it down and secure it to the lower rim of your bunk."

"Yeah but what's it do?"

"Have a go." Rimmer sighed

Pulling the screen down Inez's voice cut off as the light and sound proof material clicked into place, a few minutes passed before anybody realised that he hadn't come back out again, Rimmer had begun dozing again before he was interrupted by the voice of Myers who had looked across and seen the other bunk still sealed up.

"Boss?"

"Myers, if you interrupt me again I'm putting you on rewiring duty on the subdecks." The threat was not an idle one and not a duty that any sane crewman would want to be put on.

"Sorry boss but Rod hasn't come out of his bunk, I tried knocking but nothing."

"These things are for privacy Myers, he wouldn't be able to hear the knock." Rimmer replied with his eyes still closed, "Look its simple, it's one of two things alright? One, he liked the quiet and decided to stay in there and get some sleep, somewhat similar to what I'm trying to do and Two..."

"Boss?"

"Well, you know." Rimmer smirked to himself. "I didn't actually tell him how to get out again."

For several days the ship's shuttles took the place of the lifts and travel trains across the ship, with entire decks out of bounds it was impossible to get from the upper decks to the lower decks, personnel were evacuated from lower parts of the ship and settled into empty rooms throughout the

rest of Red Dwarf. A few dozen Starbugs were used to bring supplies up where the dispensers were now unable to acquire food or drink for the crew, in all the mining ship was ticking along as much as possible.

It was one week later that the first of the rescue vessels began to arrive, with Red Dwarf's engines offline and the entire ship now on an all but uncontrolled course towards Jupiter they got to work, closing with the gas giant meant they were closing in on the largest dockyards and naval base in the solar system. A collision between a mining ship half filled with ore and several trillion tons of metal and plastic would mean the annihilation of just about everything in a million mile radius, that included the moon of Titan directly in their path.

The first to arrive was a pair of vessels from the Space Corps Infinity fleet, three immense mile long battlecruisers connected themselves to the main hull of the five mile long ship, medical teams and engineering crews flooded aboard to help with the clean up, but the damage had been done for most of the crew. Those who had been struck with radiation sickness had long since died, those who could be saved had been, minor injuries repaired and crewmen back to work.

Every engineering deck and those to either side of the nuclear hellhole that it had become were still spewing radiation into space from ruptured hull plates and blown hatches, further decks were being evacuated and the atmospheric processors on those floor turned off for good. It wouldn't stop the radiation leakage but it would protect the crew.

Rimmer had been nervous at the approach of the two ships, all three of his brothers were command level officers on the cruisers and while he was no longer the lowly technician he had been the last time he'd been forced to see them, he was still no officer. Even the temporary CPO rank wouldn't impress them, fortunately the two ships, the _Hawking_ and _Starcrossed_ were two of the older ships in the fleet and so would be of little interest to the great Rimmer brothers. He was safe from them for a while longer.

A few days after docking the twin ships locked down their tow cables onto Red Dwarf's main hull, their docking tubes and umbilical connections decoupling, joining the hundreds of small shuttlecraft already on station their engines powered up, it was a hope, a vain one but a hope nonetheless that the combined thrust would work in an attempt to slow her down. A third ship had arrived to assist only hours before, the smaller heavy cruiser was quickly added to the plan and docked onto the underside of the massive ship.

"Chief, the _Hawking_ , _Starcrossed_ and _Titan_ have all locked on and are co-ordinating their systems ready for a reverse boost." Inez spoke up, "We're getting signals from all ships, we're ready."

"Scanner Bay to Drive Room, we've got confirmation, the Infinity Fleet ships are about to try something."

"Roger that Scanner Bay, we're receiving a transmission." A voice came back before it reappeared on the PA "All hands this is the Drive Room, stand by for deceleration attempt, get yourselves down people."

Rimmer shouted across the room "You heard her, on the deck. Anyone up on the second floor?"

"No Chief."

"Ship's auxiliary engines in three... two... one... ignition." The PA spoke up shouting as the ship began to rumble, "Shuttlecraft engines... ignition... Infinity ship engines... ignition."

"All ships have confirmed ignition."

The entire structure of Red Dwarf began to groan as immense amounts of reverse thrust from hundreds of separate points rippled through the hull, imperceptibly the ship began to slow from her hurtling course towards the Jovian moon, but within moments it was obvious that it was not nearly enough, singularly or in groups the small craft began to shut down leaving the larger cruisers to try to control the mining vessel.

"We're losing the shuttles, fuel exhaustion and overloads across the board."

"Shut them all down, it's not enough." Kochanski shook her head, "Even if we did this every day we just don't have the time to stop the ship before we hit something."

"Scannerscopes show that all traffic between us and Jupiter has been moved, there's a cordon out ten thousand kilometers from our projected course." Rimmer replied across the video-link, "There's a lot of ships in the area."

"Well we'll either be fine or have to abandon ship, I'm ordering the evacuation of all but essential crew to the rescue ships."

"We'll keep the place running Kris, get everyone we can off."

"Even at minimum we need a few hundred to a thousand to keep this ship from hitting something, Holly can only do so much without human interaction." Kochanski replied, "We'll get the miners, the science corps and most of the support staff off this tin can, it'll drop us to below two thousand, we'll have to look at evacuating the stasis prisoners as well."

"They are probably safer where they are Kris, pulling them out now would get them in the way of an evacuation, pulling them out just to throw them off the ship won't help either."

"Sure you aren't trying to keep Lister in stasis Ace?" Kristine smirked.

"Wouldn't think of it, but we have over two hundred in there right now, manpower alone will cause problems, especially with the losses we've taken in the medical wing." Rimmer shrugged, "Much as I dislike the gerbil I wouldn't leave two hundred people in stasis for the sake of one man, it's more prudence than revenge Kris."

"Alright Chief, alright." Kochanski raised her hands in mock surrender, "It was a joke."

"You need a better sense of humour then Captain." Rimmer smirked back, "I think we're going to need it."


	5. Chapter 5

**_Chapter 12_**

 ** _Drive Room_**

 ** _JMC Red Dwarf_**

For most of the week ships had been passing by watching the barely controlled mining ship skimming across space, transports had docked with both the rescue ships and the Dwarf herself, removing crew members, prisoners and animals from aboard the craft. A dozen heavy tugs, each built to manoeuvre barely moving freighters and tankers had been dispatched and added to the small fleet of ships surrounding her. Latching onto the rear of the ship, the tugs reeled out to their minimum safe distance and readied themselves.

"Heavy tugs have locked on Captain." The helmsman nodded to Kris, "Infinity Corps cruisers are synced with the other ships, White Dwarf is standing by to assist if we need them."

"All hands this is the Captain." Kochanski took a breath, "Stand by for crash deceleration, I repeat stand by for crash deceleration, it might even work this time."

"All ships this is Red Dwarf standing by, countdown at minus thirty seconds."

"This is Infinity Fleet ship Titan, hold on Red Dwarf this is going to get noisy, minus twenty seconds."

"Three... two... one."

"Ignition."

As one, three Space Corps battlecruisers, twelve tugs and the combined shuttlecraft contingent of every ship involved in this escapade threw their engines to full power, thousands of cables and dozens of energy tethers stretching to their capacity as they strained against the inertia of hundreds of cubic miles of ship moving at over one hundred thousand miles per hour. As the combined thrust moved against the immense ship the vessel began to slow first by a handful of meters per second then hundreds then thousands, Red Dwarf was beginning to slow and rapidly.

"Activate emergency thrusters, bring the docking feet online as well, everything we can use to slow this thing down."

Across the hull hundreds of tiny chemical thrusters erupted from behind sealed ports, the emergency thrusters were usually used to prevent collisions or stabilise the ship if something had caused it to heave over. Their combined power would never have been enough to stop the ship in transit but right now it was the best chance they had at adding to the deceleration, at specific points across the flanks larger more powerful thrusters burst into life, the huge docking thrusters, unused for over a year burnt white hot as the ship's remaining fuel was pumped into them pushing them beyond tolerance.

The huge mining ship slowed further and further as the hodge-podge fleet pulled for all they were worth, silently dozens then hundreds of shuttles were forced to give up, fuel exhausted or engines burning out before cutting the cables and pulling away out of the line. But still the larger tugs and warships continued on.

"We're down to thirty thousand, twenty eight, twenty five." Came Rimmer's voice from the scanner bay, "It's dropping like a stone"

"Tugs One through Four are reporting damage to their tow assemblies, they have to pull out or risk hull breach."

"Tell them to break off." Kochanski ordered, "Can we get any more from the docking systems?"

"Docking thrusters redlining, shut down imminent. Emergency thruster flame out."

"The rest of the tugs are pulling away, critical damage to number six."

"Eleven, nine thousand, eight thousand." Rimmer continued, "Docking thrusters passing the red line."

With their own thrusters melting down from the heat of their own thrust Red Dwarf slowed further, the three Space Corps warship straining their power cores to maximum and still they slowed, several of the ship's few remaining engines shut down under the strain, decades old components seizing up as they fused together.

"One thousand, seven, five, three, one hundred miles per hour Ma'am."

"All ships this is Red Dwarf, break off, I repeat break off."

"Fifty, thirty, ten." Rimmer continued, "Infinity Corps ships have broken tether and pulled away."

"Kill the thrusters."

"Thrusters offline, rerouting coolant to emission tubes." Came from the helm. "Docking systems have shut down, emergency thrusters are exhausted.

"We're at three miles per hour and on course for high orbit above Jupiter, but we're under minimal control." Rimmer reported with a relieved breath, "We're stable Captain."

A cheer rippled through the Drive Room as crew members slumped in relief, several hugged as the report was shared with the rest of the crew, it had been a dangerous and close run thing but for now the mining ship and it's remaining few personnel were in good spirits and as safe as they could be, there was still a lot ahead for the mining ship but for now they would revel in the fact that they were under control and moving slowly towards the Red Dwarf's final resting place.

 ** _Three months later_**

"We're approaching far orbit Ma'am, all decks reports ready."

"Alright, blow the locks."

"Blowing locks aye, all teams we have a go."

Across the ship jury rigged explosives and teams of specialists from a half dozen ships activated their detonators at the same time, while in the Drive Room one of the ship's command staff activated a set of automatic controls. The combined effort blew out every airlock, shuttle bay and cargo door across almost a dozen docks releasing an incredible amount of hard radiation from the ship.

From the engineering decks the contamination was incredible, super pressurised by Red Dwarf's life support systems the atmosphere blew out into space, anything not nailed down or otherwise secured followed it out, papers, discarded drink cups, burnt out Skutters and regrettably the small amount of remains of the deceased crew members that had been trapped within those decks. This close to the gas giant the gravity of Jupiter had already began pulling the debris down slowly, within a year or two the majority would disappear through and into the clouds below.

Throughout the ship rumbles could be felt as the air rushed out into space, not powerful enough to shake the vessel it was still discomforting to know that even a small amount of the ship's habitable decks were now open to cold vacuum meaning that a single breach could spell death for others of the crew, the vacuum tight doors should hold against anything but the ship's age and lack of refits could well go against them.

"The floors are blown Ma'am, ship is stable."

"Scanner Bay this is the Drive Room, radiation report."

"Scanner Bay, Connors reporting."

"Connors, what have you got."

"Contamination of the area has lowered considerably, the readings are back on the meters but still way beyond anything we could survive, the service droids might be able to for a while but in all honesty Ma'am short of ripping out those decks, there's no way we're getting those engines working."

"Alright, send in the skutters." Kris ordered.

On the outside of ship a battalion of the ship's service droids, little more than a three fingered head attached to a motorised shoebox, one best described as a dalek's sex toy by a competing company, headed in through one of the major airlocks. Heading further in the damage became more prevalent, steel and titanium stanchions were glowing slightly from the heat and radiation of the main core's release, piles of white, grey and black dust were scattered across where the blast had turned the thousands of men and women trapped on those decks into burnt bone and ash.

As they closed in towards the epicentre of the blast the damage was far more considerable, the incredible heat and active radiation had heated and warped the structure, turning hardened steel into glowing putty. Here the remains of the dead were even less evident with the bodies vapourised and leaving little but the shapes of their shadows burnt onto the remaining surfaces. But there several dozen meters away sat the guilty party, the blown drive plate leading to the ship's main fusion turbine drive.

It had been ripped off by the explosion and sent hurtling through the air, seventy kilos of heavy duty alloy plating had sliced through everything in its way, gantries, stairs, columns, even people had been cut apart by the flying hunk of metal. Several pipes and vents had blown from the overpressure while at least three more plates had ruptured with it, the entire area was nothing by a glowing molten hellhole.

"My God." Connors' voice sounded as shocked as Kris felt, they knew logically that what they would find would be horrific enough, but the reality was beyond anything they had imagined, the only saving grace was that those at the epicentre would have been dead before they knew what happened. They were the lucky ones. "Ma'am?"

"That wasn't a drive plate rupture, that was a full core exposure. Chief are you seeing this?"

"I see it Captain, whatever happened it started with a drive plate, but it took the entire core shielding with it. That kind of damage should have vaporised the entire back half of the ship, Tech Kropotkin's sealing of the chambers and the decks saved the entire crew." Rimmer said across the screen, "If any more plates had gone..."

"We're still reading over five hundred thousand at the core Ma'am, it's frying the circuits in the Skutters, we've lost thirty already." Connors reported.

"Pull the rest out towards the airlocks, there's nothing to salvage down there, there's no bodies we can get out without contaminating more of the ship as it is." Kris lowered her eyes in exhaustion, "Note in the ship's log that of the two thousand four hundred and seventeen personnel caught in the blast area, there is little to no chance of recovering the bodies within the decks compromised by the radiation. Also enter that fifty of the ship's service robots were lost in the search of the contaminated sections of the ship, they will be left within the contamination zone."

Kochanski watched the screen as the multicoloured image of the radiation spill was pulled slowly into orbit of Jupiter, the rest of the ship would be safe from the deadly pollutants as the gravity pulled the debris down and down before disappearing into the gas giant. Sooner or later the entire ship would simply fall out of the sky following the radiation trail into the depths below, they would be long gone before that could happen.

 ** _Captain's Officer_**

 ** _Drive Room_**

 ** _One hour later_**

"I think we have to begin Operation Exodus Captain." Connors said quietly, Rimmer had grabbed him on the way up to the Drive Room, as the only other experienced NCO left he'd been bumped up to Deck Sergeant and made the Chief's oppo. "There's no way we're getting this ship going again."

"He's right Kris." Rimmer said just as softly, "We're safe now, well more or less. But this ship's had it."

"I know." Kochanski sighed, "I just hoped there was some way we could salvage something out of this debacle, we've lost thousands of people here, an entire ship lost because of a stupid accident. A lot of people are going to be lost after this, we still had another two years on board before we even returned to the inner planets."

"If we could find a way to save her Captain, we would have." Rimmer consoled her, "The fact is that they could cut away the contamination, pull the radioactive sections but in the end it would just delay the inevitable. Red Dwarf was an old ship before any of us came aboard, she had maybe another tour in her but then that would have been it."

Kochanski nodded and looked out of the room's viewport, the Captain's office had been emptied of Hollister's effects and thrown into the vacuum chests with the rest of his belongings before being taken off the ship with the few remains that had been movable. She'd never really got around to making the office her own, preferring to spend her time in the Drive Room when at all possible, but even then she had had to use it when needs be.

Temporary or not, she was still the ship's commanding officer, one of the youngest outside of the Space Corps battle fleet to boot. She wasn't fooling herself that she would retain a command after they left the ship, fortunately for her she wasn't interested in being the captain of a ship, not at the moment and not after everything that had happened forcing her into her first command, nonetheless she had a job to do and a crew to keep safe.

"Get the shuttle crews to their ships, alert the first wave that they are to disembark within the next two hours, we'll start ferrying them to Io as soon as we can." Kris face looked wan and drawn, "Have the volunteer crews report to their new quarters as soon as they are ready, we're abandoning ship."

Before beginning the exodus from the immense mining ship, Kochanski had asked for two thousand of the ship's ten thousand surviving crew members to stay behind to run the ship, while Holly was a highly capable machine, he would be hard pressed to run everything needed to keep the ship running without a crew. Kris was more than aware of the capabilities of the AI to control the ship with minimal personnel however with the need to keep the ship from drifting away and to keep the systems in a semblance of functionality they needed a larger crew, the damage to the Dwarf was just too severe.

It hadn't been difficult to get the crew to stay, no the difficulty had been trying to force them off of the ship in the first place, the first attempt had less than one thousand people request a transfer off, a second attempt had Kochanski and the remaining senior officers remind the crew that anyone not on the ship's manifest as operational crew would be required to transfer to another ship, this had led to more than five thousand people putting in their transfer requests to specific areas or to leave the company. The third and last attempt had finally shifted out the final two thousand once many had realised they would be stuck on a radioactive rustbucket with very little to do and with most of the ship closed up.

The volunteers had been informed that they would need to find new residences closer to their stations, most of the shuttle pilots and their ground crews lived close enough to the bays to not require much moving, the medical staff had used several mothballed private rooms and moved in before the order had gone out. Kochanski and the drive room staff had taken over the senior staff rooms where possible, with the massive losses to the senior staff over the last year or so there were more than enough.

For Rimmer and Team Three and the majority of the surviving members of the entire ship's scanner compliment they were only a bare few decks from the primary bay, however to be on the safe side they had moved lock, stock and barrel down to the scanner bay, the empty upper and lower scanner

decks had been festooned with all kinds of detritus. Beds and footlockers were scattered around for the fifty two men and women that made up the two shifts, the exceptions had been Rimmer and his few remaining other NCOs that had taken the bunks in the break room, the Chief Petty Officer eschewing the use of the bay's offices in favour of doing required work in the bay's control rooms although on those long days when he was on twenty plus hour days he could be found napping in the Chief's office on the large leather sofa.

For a week the crew shuttled out on the Starbugs and Blue Midgets, the mining crews were transferred to White Dwarf along with half of the rest of the crew, they would head on to Mimas and Io for dispersion to other ships in the JMC fleet. Red Dwarf was approached by a tanker and supply craft, food and water was shipped aboard into the upper decks while fuel was pumped into the secondary reactors, with much of the ship now shut down and silent, the reserve power systems would be more than enough to keep the remaining people comfortable.

With the last of the evacuating crew gone, the ship began to power down as decks were evacuated, the personnel moved and power cut, one by one the decks were sealed down and the atmosphere pumped out. Of the hundreds of decks aboard the five mile long mining vessel, every floor below engine rooms were dark, hanger bays and launch facilities shut down, habitation decks, supply and cargo bays sealed, anything that could be discarded was done with.

When complete less than half of one percent of the ship's structure was powered and manned, much of the space between those sections was also locked down and evacuated, only a handful of corridors and transport tubes continued to function and even then only in an emergency.

Enough of the shuttlecraft had returned to allow the volunteers to leave if required, several of each would be pulled from duty and moved from the ship as more sections were shut down and less and less personnel were required. As they left more sections were closed and power cut, in all by the time that David Lister and the rest of the incarcerated crew members were released there were a bare two thousand people and dropping.

Now however things had changed, the newly released prisoners had been returned to the ship's company at large and like Lister were likely being informed about the changes in the state of affairs aboard Red Dwarf. At the same time they were highly disoriented, confused and in dire need of a pint or ten.

 ** _Technician Bunk Room_**

"You can't be serious, this is Rimmer we're talking about right? Six foot, nose like a pair of tubas mating?"

"I have not actually met the gentleman you mentioned but the only Mr Rimmer I know of on this ship is CPO Rimmer in the scanner bay, his actions as well as that of Captain Kochanski saved a lot of lives on this ship. You should be slightly me careful around people when you mention him, the rumours about him have changed considerably, you could quite possible call him less of a rumour and far more as a legend."

"Smeg me, the ship's a mess, I've just got out of stasis and Rimmer's gone and made himself a hero. What next?"

"Well next the ship's crew have been called to an all hands briefing tomorrow morning, you should get some rest, even with a reduced crew and ost the decks shut down, we still have work to do." Robert smiled widely, "We'll have plenty of time to get to know each other, you never know you might even like the work."

"Yeah maybe." Lister began sulking as Granger moved over to his bunk and dropped in, it was only mid way through the ship's afternoon but after a night of little sleep, a day of saying goodbye to his mates and now an avalanche of shocks hitting him from all sides Lister was feeling more than a slight bit out of his depth as he followed suit.

Lister climbed into his bunk before ordering the room's monitor on and tuning into a Zero-G football game, he had missed a year and a half of games while in stasis, the Jets had made the finals a day after he had been incarcerated and he wanted to know the score. Settling back onto the ship's issue bedding he felt his hand hit something underneath the blanket, pulling it out he looked at the cover.

 _Technical Specifications and Shipboard Operations_

 _Solar Class Interplanetary Mining and Haulage Vessel_

 _Red Dwarf Subclass_

 _Jupiter Mining Corporation Space Fleet_

His face scrunched up as he looked it over, it was the same book he'd been issued when he'd joined the crew, it was far more worn and stained than the one he had been given, which at this point was very likely still in it's original packaging and sitting in the bottom of the vacuum chest holding his belongings somewhere on one of the storage decks. He'd ask Holly to get it sent up after he'd finished watching the game, looking at the book he recognised the tidy copperplate writing on the spine.

A.J. Rimmer Bsc Ssc

Grimacing again he hefted the book with an eye to throwing it across the room into the bin on the far side before stopping, Granger hadn't done anything to annoy him yet and while he would have done it to wake Rimmer up and to smeg him right off, Lister had more decency than that or at least was able to fake it. Sighing to himself Lister dropped the book on his chest blinking when a small card slipped out from the inner cover, lifting the book back up he opened the book allowing the small white tab to fall out.

 _Lister_

 _When you finally find this book you'll have been informed that I have been transferred from my post as Head of Z Shift to the Scanner Bay, originally this book was to go back into the recycling along with a lot of other stuff that I no longer needed but then something else came to mind. I know that you dislike having to work hard, hell you hate having to work at all, but there's something in you that people see, something that I never had._

 _We were never friends, we couldn't stand each other, there was just something that stopped that from ever being possible. Maybe it was a difference in class, upbringing, social graces or just simple personal hygiene (I kid) but there was no way that either of us would have considered the other as anything other than co-workers and roommates, but here's the thing, people liked you and respected you even if you didn't yourself. Don't give me that whole 'I'm me' spiel, if you gave a damn about yourself then would you behave the way you do, look the way you do, act the way you do and risk so many lives with that cat of yours._

 _But even if you didn't care about anything there was something that you never gave a chance, you never allowed yourself to become something more than you were, I am where I am due to a fluke, a happenstance, a tiny piece of luck good or bad that took me off the path I thought I was on. So if you were ever to listen to anything I ever said then please just listen to this._

 _Give yourself a chance._

 _You aren't an idiot Lister, you have brains under that matted mop you call a skull, give yourself a chance to be more than you are, give yourself a chance to make something of your life. This book may not have been that great at helping me rise through the ranks, but maybe, just maybe it might help you on your own path. I'm not your boss anymore, I'll probably barely ever run into you again but all I can wish you is good luck and a reminder that sometimes fortune favours the bold._

 _Toodle Pipski_

 _Arnold J Rimmer_

Closing the front cover of the book Lister dropped it back down on his chest, trying to forget the message inside he went back to looking at the screen, the London Jets were three points ahead and only minutes from the first break, he watched as Jim Bexley Speed intercepted a loose ball and charged through the opposing defence like it wasn't there, another perfect five pointer for the highest scoring league player.

But Dave Lister missed the entire thing, slowly picking up the book he opened the cover and began to reread the message from his former bunkmate, pressing his lips into a thin line he took a deep breath and letting it out he reached out and turned the page.

 _Chapter One_

Lister shuffled into the briefing looking around for anybody he knew, the ship's main briefing hall was filled beyond capacity, with the ship in static orbit and most of the vessel shut down, most of the two thousand remaining personnel were crammed into an area that was fit for two thirds that number. Every member of the crew that could be spared from keeping the old mining ship running had been ordered to the meeting, at the front stood the last few officers left aboard and a number of senior non-coms.

Spying the terrible trio the (for once) uniformed Lister wandered up to the three, Selby looking up and eyes widening with a massive smile as the long lost fourth member of their group approached. Poking Petersen and Chen they followed his gaze and smiled as well, Peterson windmilling his arms as he waved, Lister felt his mood lifting as he approached them, at least they had stayed, he guessed that with the remaining crew that the catering department was still running at full tilt. All three men were also uniformed up, the smaller two men in their usual kitchen uniforms and Petersen as the only officer amongst the four, in his shipboard officer's kit.

"ATTEN-TION"

An atypical silence rang in the air as Kochanski approached the dias followed in by the remaining officers and senior non-coms, Lister was a little less surprised than he would have been to see Rimmer as one of the group but given the surprises he had been through already he doubted that anything else could shock him now, well short of Peterson turning into a jetpack equipped penguin and giving him a lapdance anyway. He also know that as the ship's temporary commanding officer Kochanski was responsible for the meeting and for the news that she knew more than a few of the crew would be unhappy with.

"Good Morning, I won't bore you with too much of a speech but this morning we recieved a message from JMC headquarters in London on a direct line via Space Corps High Command, as of Twelve Hundred hours tomorrow Red Dwarf will be stricken from the records and as a result we are to evacuate all remaining personnel and equipment as soon as possible."

The rumble was expected from the crew as they talked amongst themselves, the ship wasn't pretty and looked less like a spaceship and more like a giant rusted pillbox but it was theirs, most had spent their entire careers on the mining ship and thought they would for a while to come, to be forced to abandon her was unthinkable. Others had expected it with the denouement that the engineering sections would be completely uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years.

"I know this isn't easy for any of us, but the ship is running on emergency power as it is, at best guess the contaminated decks will be unusable for not less than three million years which means that unless we cut the ship in half there's nothing that the Corps can do for her." Kris continued, "With the exception of a small crew to keep her afloat the rest of the ship's compliment will be shipping out within the next week, the mining crews, science corps and all but a handful of the shuttle pilots will be leaving for transfer to the JMC barracks on Titan . Those that remain will be charged with stripping this ship of any useful equipment or supplies, she's a big ship so we have a lot to do."

"Technical section teams will begin cleaning out the remaining upper levels, anything that can be picked up and carried is to be boxed up and sent down to the shuttles, security teams are to check any remaining shipboard weapons and mining lasers ready for pick up by the _Scott_ in a week's time, ship's services are to pack up the kitchens and store rooms before leaving, ration packs will be distributed to all remaining members of the crew. By the end of next week this ship needs to be empty, one hundred personnel will remain aboard until we are told otherwise, volunteers are still requested."

Mumbles rose slightly as the personnel there looked at each other, one hundred people was barely enough to keep a short range freighter on duty, let alone a five mile long hunk of metal like the _Dwarf_. Whoever was staying behind would be on what would effectively be a silent, stationary ghost ship, most would be willing to stay behind as they had since the rest had been moved to Titan and Mimas

"All officers excepting myself, the CMO and the temporary Chief Engineer will be leaving the ship along with the majority of all other sections, only enough ship's services and technical support will be staying aboard until we are ordered off. Chiefs Miller and Rimmer will be staying aboard to co-ordinate the remaining personnel with the Scanner Bay as the main hub of communications and the surrounding decks will be left online for habitation. The rest of the ship will be shut down completely to save reserve power, once the ship is gutted the only way on and off with be via flight bays 11 and 19 both of which are within an hour's ride from the primary scanner hub."

"Check your onboard messages for your assignments and your date of departure from the ship, vacuum trunks and gear bags will be issued to all personnel the day before they are due to leave, we start immediately. Good luck to you all."

"ATTEN-TION." Came from Chief Miller as the Captain strode off state followed by the half dozen people who had followed her on. "DISMISSED."

"Hell of a thing to come back to hey Dave?" Selby greeted his friend with a one armed neck hug, "Welcome back."

"Did I come out of Stasis with me brain scrambled or has the universe always been this smegged up?"

"Whaddya mean?" Chen asked

"Krissie is in command, Rimmer's a smegging chief and the ship's gone to pot."

"Oh that."

"Yes THAT."

"No idea." Chen shrugged, "Things happen."

"Not like this, not in eighteen months." Lister retorted, "We're supposed to be most of the way back to Earth by now so I can get me farm."

"Not gonna happen for a while Dave, they've got to wait until this thing is decommissioned and they can round up enough of the crew to head back to Earth, although we're going on one of the newest ships in the fleet so we'll be back in about three weeks instead of a year." Selby put in, "We'll be off this ship by the end of next week."

"We will?" Petersen blinked, "What about the kitchens?"

"If they've given out the rations, we're not gonna be cooking anything, especially not for less than a hundred people. Plus we won't have to take our turn on scraping out the grease traps this month, why both keeping the place spotless if there's nobody around?"

"Ahh the silver lining has appeared." Petersen grinned at his friends, "Hmm I think we should celebrate the return of our friend Lister and the fact we're getting off this rustbucket in less than a week and have a whole lot of money to spend."

"We have?" Chen asked

"Of course, we're on a crippled ship with radiation just waiting to kill us, we've been on danger pay and double time since the rest of the ship scarpered. What you think I stayed because I liked it?" Petersen shrugged, "I've got enough to finish the dome on my house now."

"You still have that thing?"

"Of course, once the dome is finished and the oxygen system installed it will be worth over one hundred times what I paid for it, then I can go back to Earth, buy a place on Mars and emigrate. All nice and tidy."

"So we're all on extra pay?"

"Well except for Lister, he was in stasis."

"Bad luck Dave." Selby commiserated the liverpuddlian, "It could be worse, you could have been stuck in stasis for longer."

"Yeah, but then I wouldn't know how smegged this ship is until I got out to go home." Lister moped as he looked around at the thinning crowd, momentarily noticing the figure of Rimmer as the two chiefs conversed looking up Rimmer looked over at his former subordinate and merely nodded in greeting before returning to the conversation. "I'm broke and I'm still no closer to home than when I started out on this trash heap, sometimes things just ain't fair."

"Come on Dave, we'll get you trashed and you never know you might wake up back home." Selby smirked and led the way out of the briefing room, Chen and Petersen following in his footsteps with Lister following a couple of steps behind. Passing through the hatchway he noticed a couple of clipboards hanging screwed to the wall outside, a couple of names were filled in here or there, volunteers for those who were staying behind.

 _Myers, Kendell, Inez, Anderson, Belesco, Rodriguez,_ the names were mostly unfamiliar to Lister but as he looked along he recognised a few more, _Hendry, King, Cleary_ from the technican ranks and as he expected at the top of the list were two names that he knew better than anyone else on the ship. _Kochanski, Rimmer_.

He already knew that both would be staying aboard, Kris had said as much in the briefing and while that didn't surprise him, it still threw his suspension of disbelief out of the nearest airlock to see Rimmer's name on the top of what was a list of people staying aboard what was now one of the most dangerous places in the solar system. A man that until Lister had come out of stasis he had always believed was best suited to modelling brown trousers than leading the last remnants of a ship's crew against the odds, granted it wasn't the Alamo or Dunkirk or anything but he was still going to be one of those leading the hundred idiots that had signed up for this smeg.

The thoughts however didn't prevent him from stopping as he walked past the clipboard, echoes of Rimmer's letter ran through his mind as he stared at the board and so with a silent _What the hell am I doing?_ to himself... David Lister, ship's professional skiver, all round slob and self described Space Bum reached out and added his name to the list.

 _I_ really _need a drink._

 ** _Flight Bay 19_**

 ** _Six Months Later_**

Staring out from the control suite Chief Rimmer watched as another of the ship's last few shuttle craft lifted off from the hanger deck, two dozen men and women, their valuables and what little remained of the ship's stores were packed to the rafters of the little green Starbug. Three Blue Midgets had left earlier that morning with the rest of the gear and carrying the majority of his scanner crew, all that left now was a larger personnel shuttle that had brought temporary crewmembers across from JMC outer system command on Io, originally to assist with the salvage mission.

The shuttle had already been packed with rations, equipment and the last of the ship's sparse weapons supply, bazookoids and firearms for the security detachment had been stripped long ago but some had been left behind for the skeleton crew in case of any unforeseen trouble. Fortunately they hadn't been forced to use them and the weapons were still in the same crates as they had been when the rest of the crew had left the ship.

Now it was just awaiting the last of the ship's crew to embark before taking off, Rimmer paused just to take it all in, he had been aboard Red Dwarf for over ten years, only the year on the _Shackleton_ before he was transferred had had him on any other ship in the fleet. He'd been aboard when they were at full burn, when they there slowing, stationary or in orbit, he had even been aboard when they had had to perform a full reverse burn of the secondary engines to sent them backwards away from a massive uncharted meteor bouncing around the solar system. But he had never heard the ship so silent, so still, so dead.

The direct laser link between Red Dwarf and White Giant had allowed Holly to jump ship earlier that week, the on board JMC main computer had taken his place once the last of his operating systems had transferred across. Not that there was much to do in those last few days, as each deck was cleared it had been closed off, sealed and depressurised, now only the scanner bay, the rest of Deck 124 and this last shuttle bay had atmosphere and even now the crew were cutting them off too.

A slight rumble echoed in the silence as the scanner bay disengaged and wound down, the power systems going offline and disconnecting from the world around them, as soon as that was finished the bay would be sealed and would join the rest of the ship in darkness. Leaning against the bulkhead next to the window he barely noticed the last few personnel walking into the hanger bay, six men and two women were the sum total of what remained of a crew of over ten thousand souls, while the irradiated remains of over two thousand of still haunted the ship in the decks below.

With a final creak and hiss the airlock doors closed sealing the shuttle bay off and leaving the bay as the only habitable section left, rechecking the controls he nodded to the flight controller to head down. Following the woman down he wandered over to the shuttle meeting up with both Kochanski and Lister as they stood waiting, both looked about as uncomfortable as he did about it all.

"Rimmer."

"Chief."

"Lister, Captain."

"So this is it then, the end of the road."

"Yeah, its weird. She's kind of home you know?" Lister said fidgeting in his uniform, the newly added second technician rank still throwing him slightly, the entire hundred man group that has stayed behind had been bumped up a rank in thanks from the JMC. Rimmer's own deck sergeant stripes had been removed and the twin anchors of a petty officer put in their place, a silver badge above it indicating a temporary grade of CPO. "Only place I've ever felt y'know like I belonged?"

Rimmer thought back to the last two years, everything from a mistaken exam to being accepted by a group of people he had never even thought about before, to finding himself in compromising situations every three weeks, usually with said people, to his burgeoning friendships with others who until recently had felt nothing but disgust and loathing for him. Had he ever felt like he belonged anywhere?

No he hadn't.

Did he now?

For once he realised that he had.

"Yes, actually I do." Arnold replied, "And now it's gone to pot."

"What do we do after this?"

"Well." Kris put in. "We have one month medical and decontamination leave at the Space Corps base on Io, six months planet leave and then a few months of retraining and courses for each of us and then they'll transfer us to a new ship. I'm just glad they decided against the tribunal and court martial."

"They had nothing on you Kris." Arnold shook his head, "They knew it."

"Senior surviving officer is responsible for the ship..."

"Second shift navigator, never even talked to the engineering decks, no engineer training and was on duty six and a half minutes before drive went up. Anyone would have been able to see it was a whitewash, the JMC's in enough smeg as it is with Red Dwarf polluting the local area, busting down the officer that kept the crew alive?" Rimmer exclaimed, "They'd have everyone from the media to the shareholders to the senate on them for that."

"He's right Kris." Lister nodded along, "Acting Captain, senior officer and saviour of over seven thousand people, you deserve a hell of a lot more than you're getting."

Kochanski looked at her own rank markings, bumped from navigation officer second class past first and everything in between directly to executive officer, but that had been it for her, no bonus like the senior ranks and NCOs had got and little to no official recognition of her time aboard as the ship's captain. She hadn't been looking for plaudits but she knew that this was simply command's way of getting their own back for whatever imagined slight she had caused. Although she didn't know at the time that several of the crew had already informed the media and other ships in the fleet about the actions of the captain and of the remaining chiefs.

"Maybe, but we've still got to get out of here as it is." The Captain straightened herself up, "I guess now is as good a time as any."

"Alright everyone aboard." Rimmer shouted, "You people in the tower as well."

It only took a few minutes for the last of the crewmembers to find their way aboard the shuttle, even packed as it was, the remaining seating was still more than enough for the eight of them with room to spare. As the Captain, Kochanski refused to leave the ship before anyone else, although the 'tradition' had fallen out of use over the years she still found herself holding to it as she looked around the hanger bay before climbing in.

A remote signal came from the shuttle as it took off, the atmospheric blowers turned off before the vacuum dumpers activated, instead of recirculating the air inside the bay the ship simply dumped it into space. With depressurisation complete the pilot hit the main engines and they rocketed out and away from the mining ship.

Staring out of the forward windows the crewmen watched as Red Dwarf slowly got smaller, with the vessel completely dead, lights out and engines off it was an eery sight for them all. Rimmer himself stared at the only home he had ever really had and even knowing what was to come he couldn't quite believe that he would never go aboard her again, he barely noticed as Kris spoke into the open comm line to the surrounding vessels and didn't even contemplate when the drones began their burn.

Starting slightly as he saw the engines power up Arnold watched as the two dozen huge drone tugs went to full burn, five miles of practically stationary metal was difficult to move as they had found out to their cost. However this time it was far less than trying to stop a speeding asteroid and more to nudge it towards a new course, it only took a few minutes for the tugs to correct the Red Dwarf's attitude before it was in place. The tugs unlatched before drawing away and leaving the mining ship behind, the Dwarf was now in the right place and at the right time.

At an unseen signal the ship's main engine exploded into life, even damaged there was enough of the system left to propel her, the remaining secondary fuel had been pumped into the system and the pistons primed over the last few months, each piston slammed down driving the fuel further and further into the combustion chamber where the secondary core combusted the hydrogen atoms and pulsed the energy out into space. Moving slowly but increasing in speed the massive ship fell into the gravity well of the gas giant, the immense pull of the planet accelerating Red Dwarf faster and faster as it dove into the red tinged gas clouds.

The decision had been made by the company that the ship was a hazard to the solar system, the radiation spill while being contained by the gravitational pull only needed a rogue asteroid or some space jockey running around to cause an accident. With that concern in mind they had ordered that the stricken ship be turned into the gas giant and thrown into the clouds, an order that they were now seeing through.

The dive ended with their former home disappearing into Jupiter itself, driving further and further down into the core, as the fuel ran out she would coast on inertia only slowed as the gravity towards the centre of the planet increase into a liquid state and then into solid. By then five miles of metal, plastic and a host of other materials would have been crushed like an oversized tin can, turning it into a sphere of metal, a coffin for the remains of the crew left behind.

They stood there silently for a long time, their thoughts still with the ship they knew was tunnelling its way through the clouds to its final resting place. Lister without much of a thought slipped his arms around the petite young woman in front of him, unwilling to ignore the attempt at comfort Kris simply leaned back into his embrace and stared out the window, Dave laid his chin softly on top of her head her dark hair flattening down as leaned down and just enjoyed the feeling of his lady love in his arms.

Arnold gave himself a little smile, things had changed for all three of them in such a short time, Kris had stepped above and beyond to become the leader of men that Second Technician Arnold Rimmer had once aspired to, Dave had started taking himself and his work seriously and had even shown that behind his uncaring and unkempt exterior he was a very savvy technical operator and had even shown an innate understanding of machinery that even he himself had never expected.

Both had even shown that the romantic interest that Lister still had for the petite Scot wasn't as one sided as he had thought, nothing had happened yet but now... now there would be time for them to really figure out what they were to each other.

As for Petty Officer Arnold J Rimmer?

Well for him things were just beginning.

.

.

.

.

.

"Wait a second, where's my guitar?"


	6. Chapter 6

**_Epilogue (Well why not end on a high note?)_**

 ** _JMC Dockyard Alpha Three_**

 ** _Io Docks_**

 ** _Jupiter_**

 ** _One Year Later_**

The Io Docks were the single largest artificial construct in the Solar System, built as the jumping off point for the JMC superheavy mining ships, tankers and freighters as well as the central command hub for the Space Corps warships patrolling the system, the dockyard was only closely followed by the Lunar Authority's docking port in orbit of Earth's moon at one half the size and the asteroid belt patrol base. Hundreds of ships had been built since the yards had been opened, from the first JMC transport through to the newest and most advanced ships in the fleet, advanced enough to make the old Dwarf look like a three wheeler.

"So that's it is it?" Lister fidgeted in his uniform, the newly issued and still sharply creased shirt and trousers were uncomfortable and a little tight across the shoulders, still given what was going on he guessed it was only natural.

"Yep the new Red Dwarf." Rimmer replied from next to him, the immense window on the side of the transport shuttle showing a massive form, recognisable but very different from the last ship they had served on. Sleek, bulky and long in a way that only a city sized ship could be, she was also red. Very Red

"She's bigger."

"Six miles long, ramscoop and antimatter powered demi-light speed engines, she's a hundred times faster that the old Dwarf's two hundred thousand." Rimmer rattled off the stats he had long since memorised. "Six miles of smooth sleek JMC and Space Corps R&D topped off with a Type Ten holo-AI system."

"Poor old Holly."

"He was on his last legs Dave." A female voice joined them her arm wrapping round Lister's own before entangling it with Rimmer's "He's happy enough at the dockyards."

"'S'pose"

 _"Commander Kochanski, we are making our way to hanger bay one, we should have you up to the drive room within the hour."_

"Thank you Pilot." Commander Kristine Kochanski, Ship's Executive officer replied to the voice over the radio, well then Chief, First Technician, I believe we have work to do."

"Eighteen months to the Oort cloud and eighteen months back." First Technician David Lister, Head of A Shift, shook his head. "Whoever thought we'd end up here? I didn't"

Nodding along with him the newly minted permanent Chief Petty Officer Arnold J Rimmer, Chief of Scanner Operations replied "You know something Listy, neither did I."

The End

Final Dedication: To my life partners and greatest people I could ever have known, My wife of eighty five years Nadine Crane-Rimmer, my best friend for the last ninety years, Admiral The Lady Kristine Kochanski and in memory of Red Dwarf's Scanner Team Three and a poke in the eye to my erstwhile and dearly missed rival, enemy, nemesis, best friend and partner in crime, Lieutenant Commander The Lord David 'Cinzano Bianco' Lister (Bastard went and got the rank didn't he).

Re-Published in full on the eve of the launch of the Red Dwarf Class light speed mining fleet in memory of those who served on all the ships of the name. All peoples and places depicted within this publication are real and have been described by the author to the best of his ability.

And that is that, all finished.

As you may have noticed, this is supposed to be pieces of an autobiography and not an entire book, I may come back to it time to time and add a new chapter in the life of MCPO Rimmer and his cohorts, if anybody has a request then let me know and I'll see what I can do.

As usual we have the disclaimers so I don't end up in up to my neck, Red Dwarf belongs to Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (as far as I know they still both own part of it), as well as a bunch to the BBC and the rest to Dave (the TV station, not the character).

In case anyone is interested this is a list of the casting for this fic, some I chose, some were ideas from others and all would play their characters at the suitable ages., I've cast everyone but if anyone has an idea for a replacement let me know via PM and I'll see about adding them. Some you might even recognise from other incarnations from the series ;)

In order of appearance

3rd Technician David Lister: **Craig Charles**

Unnamed Officer: **Robert Llewellyn**

1st Technician Robert Granger, Z Shift Commander: **Tom Baker**

2nd Technician/Deck Sergeant Arnold Rimmer, Chief of Scanner Team Three: **Chris Barrie**

Commander Nadine Crane, Exam Invigilator: **Jane Horrocks**

Holly, Ship's Computer: **Norman Lovett**

Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski, Red Dwarf Secondary Navigator: **CP (Claire) Grogan**

Captain Frank Hollister, Commanding Officer, Red Dwarf: **Mac MacDonald**

Scanner Tech Rodrigo Inez, Scanner Team Three: **Jon Huertas**

Tech Corporal Robert Connors, Scanner Team Three: **Kevin Mckidd**

MCPO Michael Henderson (Chief of Sensor Operations): **David Harewood**

CPO David Waddle, Scanner Team Three: **Michael Fassbender**

Scanner Tech Hernandez, Scanner Team Three: **Phillip Winchester**

Scanner Tech Brown, Scanner Team Three: **Bruce Campbell**

Scanner Tech Hicks, Scanner Team Three: **Simon Pegg**

Scanner Tech Davis, Scanner Team Three: **Nick Frost**

Scanner Tech Roboute, Scanner Team Three: **Karl Urban**

Scanner Corporal Rod Chang, Scanner Team Three: **Garrett Wang**

Scanner Tech Diana Landon, Scanner Team Three: **Jessica Fox**

Scanner Tech Barton, Scanner Team Three: **Jesse Spencer**

Scanner Tech Samuals, Scanner Team Three: **Andrew Lee Potts**

Scanner Tech Linda Landon, Scanner Team Three: **Daniela Denby Ashe**

Power Tech Edwards, Scanner Team Three: **Sullivan Stapleton**

Dr Brannigan, Red Dwarf Chief Psychiatrist: **Richard Coyle**

Dr Karen Newton, Red Dwarf, Chief Medical Officer (Mention only): **Kika Mirylees**

First Technician Alexander Kropotkin, Head of Z Shift (Mention only): **Gary Oldman**

Scanner Tech Myers, Scanner Team Three: **Rafe Spall**

Catering Officer Olaf Petersen: **Mark Williams**

Catering Corporal Selby: **David Gillespie**

Catering Corporal Chen: **Paul Bradley**

Shuttle Pilot (VO): **Kevin Conroy**

 ** _And for those who want to know what Rimmer's post-nominals actually mean_**

 ** _BSc (Hons):_** _Bachelor of Science Honours_

 ** _MSc (Hons):_** _Master of Science Honours_

 ** _SSc:_** _Silver Swimming Certificate_

 ** _SCMH:_** _Space Corps Medal of Honour_

 ** _MM:_** _Military Medal_


End file.
